Why tho
Hello.
It’s been rough couple of weeks, but here we are. The chickens are thrilled it’s a rainy morning so I can let them out to wander the yard without fear of getting eaten by a hawk. The cats are happy it’s a little less hot (me, too). I taught my first class of this semester at Smith this week, and started reading through the proofs for one of my chapbooks (coming out this November with Porkbelly Press). Today, I have a variation on a recipe for you, some cat pics, and some poetry thoughts.
First, because sign ups close soon - I’m so looking forward to working with a group on chapbooks this fall, in this online class. Sign up here, tell your friends!
Kitttttens
Now, because we all need more of this in our lives, a throwback to this photo from when our cat Mary was a kitten:
What’s for dinner
A couple of weeks ago a friend from my MFA cohort came to visit, and I made this for dinner. It’s still peak tomato season here, though that will change soon, and I wanted to use a lot of eggs from my chickens, and a lot of tomatoes, because my kitchen looked like this:
I love love love this Savory Galette with Leeks and Kale from Feasting at Home and I make it a lot in colder months. But again, there were tomatoes to be cooked. So I used the basic idea of Sylvia’s recipe, but used tomatoes instead of kale. I like this one because it’s not as eggy as a quiche, it’s more like the eggs hold together the veggies and cheese, and make them more substantial.
I don’t bother trying to make a rough puff pastry, I just make a whole wheat pastry crust and I usually do it in a pie pan, but the sheet pan works just fine, too.
Why Poetry?
I’ve been thinking, as I start my teaching year, and as I tend to my own work, why poetry? Why do we write it, why do we read it? I think there are a lot of answers to this question, of course. But here’s the one on my mind these days.
In a conversation with my sweetheart about what an ethnography is, he said, “What people don’t usually talk about is that you use an ethnography when other methods of research have failed.”
This is how I feel about poetry, too. Charles Bukowski said it long before me—
In poetry, we have space for history, and for futurism. Space to lean into perfection and clarity and precision, and also to play with messiness, fragmentation, and surrealism. To make leaps, and to stay stuck on repeat.
I’ll close with a favorite poem by Kim Addonizio.
The Numbers
by Kim Addonizio
How many nights have I lain here like this, feverish with plans,
with fears, with the last sentence someone spoke, still trying to finish
a conversation already over? How many nights were wasted
in not sleeping, how many in sleep—I don’t know
how many hungers there are, how much radiance or salt, how many times
the world breaks apart, disintegrates to nothing and starts up again
in the course of an ordinary hour. I don’t know how God can bear
seeing everything at once: the falling bodies, the monuments and burnings,
the lovers pacing the floors of how many locked hearts. I want to close
my eyes and find a quiet field in fog, a few sheep moving toward a fence.
I want to count them, I want them to end. I don’t want to wonder
how many people are sitting in restaurants about to close down,
which of them will wander the sidewalks all night
while the pies revolve in the refrigerated dark. How many days
are left of my life, how much does it matter if I manage to say
one true thing about it—how often have I tried, how often
failed and fallen into depression? The field is wet, each grassblade
gleaming with its own particularity, even here, so that I can’t help
asking again, the white sky filling with footprints, bricks,
with mutterings over rosaries, with hands that pass over flames
before covering the eyes. I’m tired, I want to rest now.
I want to kiss the body of my lover, the one mouth, the simple name
without a shadow. Let me go. How many prayers
are there tonight, how many of us must stay awake and listen?