More notes to myself

Feel-good story about France’s far-reaching efforts to boost its stork population. Quite a successful program; they’ve gone from 9 breeding pairs in 1983 to 270 pairs today. I especially like the schoolchildren’s efforts to repair nests during the birds’ migration.

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The best ratio (so far) for Kung Pao Tofu sauce is:

1 cup vegetable stock
3 tablespoons oyster sauce
2 tablespoons corn starch
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon habañero sauce (2 t if using Tabasco)
1 soy sauce (only if the peanuts aren’t salted and you’ve forgotten to salt the tofu)

Food blogs worth visiting regularly:
Fine Furious Life
Evolving Tastes

Is this gorgeous-looking rum bundt cake on Design Sponge worth making even though it calls for both cake and pudding mixes? Am I being a snob? Or am I just easily swayed by its sculptural qualities?

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You know someone at The Wall Street Journal hates you when this is the photo they use to illustrate a story:

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They Feed the Lion
from Philip Levine’s New Selected Poems, Knopf

Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,
Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,
Out of the creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,
They Lion grow.

Out of the gray hills
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,
Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,
Out of the bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to stretch,
They Lion Grow.

Earth is eating trees, fence posts,
Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,
“Come home, Come home!” From pig balls,
From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness
From the furred ear and the full jowl come
The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose
They Lion grow.

From the sweet glues of the trotters
Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower
Of the hams the thorax of caves,
From “Bow Down” come “Rise Up,”
Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels,
They grained arm that pulls the hands,
They Lion grow.

From my five arms and all my hands,
From all my white sins forgiven, they feed
From my car passing under the stars,
They Lion, from my children inherit,
From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion,
From they sack and they belly opened
And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth
They feed they Lion and he comes.

On CBC recently I heard an interview with an Iranian poet who was Holding Forth on the galvinizing effect that Ten Nights of Poetry had on the Iranian Revolution in 1978. The poets used variations on “blood” and “red” to prepare and inspire the people for marches, protest, and violence in the name of democracy. Some believed so fierecly in the poetry that when democracy failed them, they blamed the poets.

Of course, in the land of Rumi and Omar Khayyam, and in a language as rich in metaphor as Farsi, it’s natural that poetry is central to culture and identity. So why do we in the West, who speak the planet’s richest language, feel such estrangement from poetry, especially in politics? Why was it fresh and exciting when Kennedy had Frost read at his inaugural address, and a cheap cop-out when Clinton had Angelou read?

With every word is so parsed in our own democracies, every idea so bite-sized, the poetry of our own rich language is washed away.

So here’s a poem by Anthony Hecht, political in its own quiet way.

Poppy

It builds like unseen fire deep in a mine,
This igneous, molten wrath,
The smelting torture that rises with the decline
Of reason, signifying death.

As when, fueled with suspicion, the coal-black
Othello is wrought forge-hot
Or when pouting Achilles lashes back
At the whole Trojan lot.

For the death of Patroclus: the one prepared to die
In fury, to pit his life
Against a well-armed equal, the other to slay
An innocent young wife;

Both, curiously, heroes. It is like that seething
Pit, pitch-black, as whose lip
A petaled flame spreads crimsonly, bequeathing
One or another sleep.

Oh-so Literary

I’m going to write a short story about a charming couple who live in a first-floor apartment, whose upstairs neighbors erect a pumpkin-headed scarecrow and move it secretly in the night, arranging it so at first, its flat, unseeing eyes peep through this window, then that one, then another, so the couple never know when they’re being observed by the dread golem— until they suffer psychotic breaks and attack the dread thing with gardening tools.

It will be based on a true story.

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This poem by Babbette Deutsch is from the Everyman’s Library collection Pocket Poems collection, The Dance.

BALLET SCHOOL

Fawns in the winter wood
Who feel their horns, and leap,
Swans whom the bleakening mood
Of evening stirs from sleep,
Tall flowers that unfurl
As a moth, driven, flies,
Flowers with the breasts of a girl
And sea-cold eyes.
The bare bright mirrows glow
For their enchanted shapes.
Each is a flame, and so,
Like flame, escapes.

Happy Birthday to Me

I stumbled across this meme months ago and squirreled it away just for you, sweet reader.

On this day in history:
1. Charles VI of France expels all Jews from France (1394)
2. United States Constitution signed* (1787)
3. Camp David Accords signed between Israel and Egypt (1978)

I share my birthday with:
1. Sophia Alekseyevna (1657)
2. Billy the Kid (1860)

And it’s the anniversary of the death of:
1. Spiro Agnew (1996)

*I’ve always considered the Constitution to be the true founding document of our fair nation. Sure, it lacks the flash of “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”, but The Preamble is a lovely piece of hopeful, ambitious philosophical writing:
“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility….”

We (or, hey, I) tend to think of the Founding Parents as fierce men stomping about in Philadelphia’s streets in their stockings and glorified deck shoes yammering on to each other earnestly about obscure points of law; but really, they were just starry-eyed dreamers like the rest of us. To wit: the “promote the general welfare” bit. I wonder if that would get shoehorned in today.

Anyway, before I get distracted, I thought I’d share some hard-won nuggets of wisdom I’ve accrued, lo these 25 years.

• Regardless of the proverb, it’s very easy to love a poor man instead of a rich one; plus, bonus points for not having to drag a camel through the eye of a needle in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. So that’s handy.

• And speaking of camels, to avoid being spat upon while standing in their presence, it’s best to keep yourself about level with the front legs.

• If you’ve got a sunburn and haven’t got access to aloe vera gel, you can make a soothing paste of water and baking soda to help stop the pain.

• Everyone loves a handwritten thank-you note, plus it gives you a legitimate opportunity to play with sealing wax.

• Never pass up the chance to pee.

• Listening to Car Talk is a great mood-booster, even when your mother calls to say ‘happy birthday, oh, by the way, we almost had your beloved childhood dog put down last Thursday.’ You get to learn the names of a lot of different bits of the combustion engine (which share the names of many human parts: knuckles! joints! shafts!), if not how they fit together or work (suck! squeeze! bang! blow!).

• It’s always a good idea to have a pen and something to scribble on somewhere on your person.

• Old Hollywood classics are usually a let-down, so always get a back-up movie rental.

• When baking, if you measure your oil first, you can used the pre-greased cup to measure sticky substances (molasses, peanut butter) and they’ll slide right out.

• A gift of monogrammed handkerchiefs is a good choice for anyone.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. We’re off to celebrate my birthday with our usual Caligulan levels of indulgence. Have another round on me, and a happy birthday to you from me, whenever that may be. See you tonight at the Circus Maximus.

In closing, here’s a poem by Jack Gilbert.

Getting Away with It

We have already lived in the real paradise.
Horses in the empty summer street.
Me eating the hot wurst I couldn’t afford,
in frozen Munich, tears dropping. We can
remember. A child in the outfield waiting
for the last fly ball of the year. So dark
already it was black against heaven.
The voices trailing away to dinner,
calling faintly in the immense distance.
Standing with my hands open, watching it
curve over and start down, turning white
at the last second. Hands down. Flourishing.

The Race

A poem by Sharon Olds from her book, The Father. Click here to hear Ms. Olds read it to you.

The Race

When I got to the airport I rushed up to the desk,
bought a ticket, ten minutes later
they told me the flight was cancelled, the doctors
had said my father would not live through the night
and the flight was cancelled. A young man
with a dark brown moustache told me
another airline had a nonstop
leaving in seven minutes. See that
elevator over there, well go
down to the first floor, make a right, you’ll
see a yellow bus, get off at the
second Pan Am terminal, I
ran, I who have no sense of direction
raced exactly where he’d told me, a fish
slipping upstream deftly against
the flow of the river. I jumped off that bus with those
bags I had thrown everything into
in five minutes, and ran, the bags
wagged me from side to side as if
to prove I was under the claims of the material,
I ran up to a man with a flower on his breast,
I who always go to the end of the line, I said
Help me. He looked at my ticket, he said
Make a left and then a right, go up the moving stairs and then
run. I lumbered up the moving stairs,
at the top I saw the corridor,
and then I took a deep breath, I said
goodbye to my body, goodbye to comfort,
I used my legs and heart as if I would
gladly use them up for this,
to touch him again in this life. I ran, and the
bags banged against me, wheeled and coursed
in skewed orbits, I have seen pictures of
women running, their belongings tied
in scarves grasped in their fists, I blessed my
long legs he gave me, my strong
heart I abandoned to its own purpose,
I ran to Gate 17 and they were
just lifting the thick white
lozenge of the door to fit it into
the socket of the plane. Like the one who is not
too rich, I turned sideways and
slipped through the needle’s eye, and then
I walked down the aisle toward my father. The jet
was full, and people’s hair was shining, they were
smiling, the interior of the plane was filled with a
mist of gold endorphin light,
I wept as people weep when they enter heaven,
in massive relief. We lifted up
gently from one tip of the continent
and did not stop until we set down lightly on the
other edge, I walked into his room
and watched his chest rise slowly
and sink again, all night
I watched him breathe.

The City and Its Own

More poetry, anyone? This one is from last week, by Irving Feldman. It describes the New York I would have preferred to know, in the 30s and 40s. It’s from his collection Leaping Clear.

The City and Its Own

Among the absolute graffiti which
—stenciled, stark, ambiguous—command
from empty walls and vacant lots,
POST NO BILLS, NO TRESPASSING HERE:
age and youth—Diogenes, say,
and Alexander, dog-philosophy
and half-divine, too-human imperium—
colliding, linger to exchange ideas
about proprietorship of the turf.
Hey, mister, you don’t own the sidewalk!
Oh yeah?
Yeah! the city owns the sidewalk—mister!
Oh yeah! says who?
Thus power’s rude ad hominem walks all over
the civil reasoner, the civic reason.

Everyone has something.
Everything is someone’s.

The city is the realm of selves in rut
and delirium of ownership, is property,
objects made marvelous by prohibition
whereby mere things of earth become ideas,
thinkable beings in a thought-of world
possessed by men themselves possessed by gods.

. . .

So I understood at twelve and thirteen,
among the throngs of Manhattan,
that I dodged within a crowd of gods
on the streets of what might be heaven.
And streets, stores, stairs, squares, all
that glory of forbidden goods, pantheon
of properties open to the air,
gave poor boys lots to think about!
And then splendor of tall walkers
striding wide ways, aloof and thoughtful
in their nimbuses of occupation,
advancing with bright assurance as if
setting foot to say, This is mine, I
am it—and passing on to add,
Now yield it to you, it is there.
Powers in self-possession, their thinking
themselves was a whirling as they went,
progressing beyond my vista to possess
unthought-of worlds, the wilderness.

These definitions, too, have meant to draw
a line around, to post and so prohibit,
and make our vacant lot a sacred ground.
Here then I civilize an empty page
with lines and letters, streets and citizens,
making its space a place of marvels now
seized and possessed in thought alone.
You may gaze in, you must walk around.
—Aha (you say), conceit stakes out its clay!
—That is a cynic’s interpretation,
pulling the ground out from under my feet;
I fall, I fear, within your definition
which, rising and dusting off my knees,
civilly I here proclaim our real estate,
ours in common, the common ground
of self, a mud maddened to marvel
and mingle, generously, in generation.

The Ladybugs

April is National Poetry Month in the US, as lots of places pointed out a few weeks ago. I’ve been subscribed to the Knopf Poem-of-the-Day newsletter for three years now, and here’s my favorite from last year. It’s by Nancy Willard*, from her 2004 collection In the Salt Marsh, which I haven’t been able to find in anywhere in the province.
The Ladybugs

It’s true. I invited them into my home,
four thousand ladybugs from the Sierras.
I paid for their passage.
I paid for their skilled labor.
I was desperate when I read the notice
in a mail-order catalog showing flea zappers
and organic devices for vaporizing mold.

Are pests killing your trees and shrubs?
Ladybugs are the answer.

They arrived, famished and sleepy,
in a muslin bag slim as a pencil case,
or a reticule for opera glasses,
or very small change.
For once in my life I read the instructions
for sending my private army into the world.

The ladybugs will want a drink
after their long journey.
Sprinkle the sack before releasing them.

I shook handfuls of water over them.
Drops big as bombs pounded their shelter,
a mass baptism into our human ways.
They did not buzz or beat their wings,
but as the warmth of my house woke them,
I saw a shifting of bodies, of muscles rippling,
like waves adjusting themselves to a passing boat.

Do not release the ladybugs during the heat of the day
or while the sun is shining.

Under the full moon I carried my guests
to the afflicted catalpa waving its green flags.
I untied the bag. I reached in and felt a tickling,
a pulsing of lives small as a watch spring.
I seized a handful and tossed them into the branches.
They clung to my hand for safety.
Their brothers and sisters,
smelling the night air,
hung on my thumb, my wrist,
and my arm sleeved in ladybugs, baffled, muttering
in the silent tick of their language,
Where are we? What does she want of us?

Do not release too many at one time.
A tablespoon of ladybugs on each shrub
and a handful on each tree should keep them
pest-free. Keep on hand, always, a small bag
of ladybugs in your refrigerator.
Do not freeze.

I have made my abode with the ladybugs
and they have chosen me as their guardian,
because the meek shall inherit the earth,
because I found one at rest in the porch
of my ear, because I did not harm the one
that spent the night under the deep ridge
of my collarbone, or the one that crossed
my knuckles like a ring seeking
the perfect finger.

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*Also author of Pish, Posh, Said Heironymus Bosch, a childhood favorite I’d nearly forgotten.