While Andy has been busy this week thinking about being a blogger (see Andy’s Corner), my thoughts have been more focused on the poetic side of things.
Do English professors still ask you to “explicate” poems? That term strikes terror in my heart, even 50+ years after the fact. A quick internet search reveals that “dissect” is often used in today’s poetry line-by-line analysis – in which usually-yawning students are forced to participate.
There’s lots of advice out there about better ways of inspiring students (or maybe even us adults?) to read and write poetry. On Poets.org there are some especially quirky examples of approaches:
- post poems in faculty bathroom stalls.
- create an elegy based upon a NYTimes obituary.
- at residential facilities for juvenile offenders have a guest poet read a poem in the morning and “at bedtime each night.”
- gather poems to dedicate to a special person “with personal comments about that poem directed to that person.” (my mind is going crazy thinking of all the possibilities! 🙂
- go around the community and hand out business cards with poems typed on them.
What poems might faculty members write here?
What got me started on all of this? Well, I wanted to blog about tomatoes and I wanted a poem to include. A quick search of the internet came up with a Louise Gluck poem. For those of you who don’t focus on the poetry scene, an article in The Los Angeles Review of Books had this to say about Louise Gluck, who is in her 70’s – about my age,
Glück is as important and influential a poet as we have in America, a tagline whose strangeness deepens the more one reads her. She has won every major award; she served as Poet Laureate (how incongruous to think of this bleak, private poet in such a smiling, public role). Her work is an occasion for something like rapture among her admirers.
I think Gluck’s poem about tomatoes may be brilliant, but I’m not sure. No matter how hard I try, I’m not certain I understand the last few lines – as I “explicate” the poem in my I’m-no-English-professor manner. Why does she talk about “the red leaves of the maple falling” when it’s a poem about tomatoes? Are the “vines” she mentions tomato vines? Or is that another aside, like the maple reference? Is she saying that the Divine doesn’t have a heart (which actually is kind of interesting to contemplate)?
“Louise Glück: The Ardent Understatement of Postconfessional Classicism” is a must-read for those of you who want to delve more deeply into explication. It’s a chapter in this U of Missouri Press book.
But first read Gluck’s tomato poem “Vespers”:
A Black Krim tomato plant in our garden
A tomato hornworm which WAS in our garden. Someone said that if you fry them they taste like fried green tomatoes. Want to give it a try and report back? Be sure to wash them first.
If your tomatoes haven’t been destroyed by the tomato hornworm or succumbed to a fungus with black spot or blight or whatever the heck is wrong with our Black Krim, here are a couple of great recipes, using tomatoes fresh off the vine.
Garden Fresh Tomato and Basil Pasta
Garden Fresh Tomato and Basil Pasta
- 2 c chopped tomatoes – use different colors and sizes, including cherry or SunGold)
- 2 large tomatoes pureed in a blender or food processor (1 1/2 – 2 cups after pureeing)
- 8 fresh basil leaves, slivered
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1/2 tsp salt – or to taste
- 1/4 tsp ground pepper
- 3 T olive oil, divided (1 T mixed into the tomatoes and 2 T mixed with the pasta)
- 1/2 lb angel hair pasta (or bow tie), cooked according to package directions and then tossed with the 2 T of olive oil
- grated Parmesan or Pecorino cheese (optional)
- some small whole basil leaves to garnish (optional)
Combine the chopped and pureed tomatoes, basil, garlic, salt, pepper, chile flakes and 1 T of the olive oil and allow to sit for at least 30 minutes and up to 4 hours.
When ready to serve, place some pasta in individual serving bowls and top with the tomato mixture. Add the cheese – and a few basil leaves, if you wish.
Sopa de Lima with Corn Salsa
Sopa de Lima with Corn Salsa
- 1 1/2 c fresh corn kernels (2 ears)
- 1 1/2 c diced tomato
- 1/2 c chopped cilantro
- 1/2 c finely diced red onion
- 1 T finely chopped seeded jalapeno (optional – or to taste)
- 1/4 c fresh lime juice
- salt and pepper
- 8 c chicken broth
- 2 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs
- 1 tsp dried Mexican oregano – or regular dried oregano
- Steamed white rice, crumbled queso fresco (optional), diced avocado for serving
- wedges of lime for serving
Big Little Meals 
Good intentions.
early Promise.
Reality interposes.
Early red leaves on the oak,
yellow on the cottonwood
join wilt, mildew and
insect damage.
There are many losses.
No deity offers succor or protection.
For that which I control,
I am responsible.
For the rest there is
acceptance.
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What a great poem and so appropriate. Thanks! Shall we henceforth refer to you as Robert Frost Carleton?
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Ha! ThanX! I was trying to respond to the question concerning the origin of the red leaves… Literary criticism always inspired combined terror and disbelief in me. If the critic is explaining some obscure or obsolete word, I’m OK. If he’s going on about the sublime interaction of the author’s ego with the inner feelings of the Dervish, I’m just shaking my head and wondering where to get coffee or a glass of red.
I ain’t no poet and I know-it.
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