jama rattigan's alphabet soup

barbara crooker: come over to the dark side

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:51:05 GMT

#9 in the Poetry Potluck Series, celebrating National Poetry Month 2011.

eclectic echoes/flickr

Poetry lovers, slip on your black satin bibs and saunter right up to the table. For today, black berets only, please.

Goodbye sweetness and light, hello dark and sexy.

When it comes down to it, really down to it, who do you love? Barbara Crooker knows.

linniekin/flickr

Very likely you’ve seen her “Ode to Chocolate” online, or maybe in her newest poetry collection, MORE (C&R Press, 2010). I love this swagger of a poem, the way it tempts and teases, plays to the rebel, takes no prisoners. Not an ounce of milquetoast, no hem or haw. Dark, baby, dark. Deep, decadent, divine.

ODE TO CHOCOLATE
by Barbara Crooker

I hate milk chocolate, don’t want clouds
of cream diluting the dark night sky,
don’t want pralines or raisins, rubble
in this smooth plateau. I like my coffee
black, my beer from Germany, wine
from Burgundy, the darker, the better.
I like my heroes complicated and brooding,
James Dean in oiled leather, leaning
on a motorcycle. You know the color.

Oh, chocolate! From the spice bazaars
of Africa, hulled in mills, beaten,
pressed in bars. The cold slab of a cave’s
interior, when all the stars
have gone to sleep.

Chocolate strolls up to the microphone
and plays jazz at midnight, the low slow
notes of a bass clarinet. Chocolate saunters
down the runway, slouches in quaint
boutiques; its style is je ne sais quoi.
Chocolate stays up late and gambles,
likes roulette. Always bets
on the noir.

© 2010 Barbara Crooker. All rights reserved. Used with permission of the author.

Barbara: “Ode to Chocolate” came out of a prompt I was doing with a women’s retreat, one where I’ve led the poetry workshop for oh, 26-27 years now. I was looking for a food prompt, and did a Google search on chocolate + poems, coming up blank. So I decided to write one of my own! The group still fondly remembers me breaking off small bits of a very dark chocolate bar and passing them out, almost like communion. They wrote some really neat poems as well.

I first encountered “Ode to Chocolate” at Diane Lockward’s Blogalicious, when she hosted a Poetry Salon in honor of Barbara’s MORE. Loved it, of course, and thus began my hunger for more Barbara poems.

Shortly after I posted Diane's "If Only Humpty Dumpty Had Been a Cookie" for Poetry Friday, I received an email from Barbara, who offered to send me a batch of gluten free cookie recipes, several of them containing chocolate. We talked about "Ode to Chocolate," "Ode to Olive Oil," and the general deliciousness of food poetry. Yes, here was a woman after my own heart, extolling gravy and writing fondly about her mother's piecrust. Sweet serendipity; there was more.

We discovered that the same novelist and professor, Asa Baber (who for many years wrote the "Men" column in Playboy magazine), had been pivotal in both our lives as fledging writers. Barbara met Asa at a conference; the advice he so kindly offered set her on the right path. Asa was my first college English professor in Hawai'i, the one who convinced me to pursue creative writing. He was unconventional and disarmingly handsome with a deep, dark tan. My James Dean, a master of je ne sais quoi. Simply no limits to the power of chocolate and poetry, happy connections being the greatest gift of all.

So, back to Barbara's gluten free recipes. Last week, I made her Chocolate Shortbread, which is so, sooooooo good. The entire house smelled of rich chocolate, butter and vanilla all afternoon. I kind of drifted around from room to room in a deep chocolate reverie, thinking that if food is poetry, this cookie is the perfect love sonnet. As it turns out, the recipe actually represents the special love of a mother for her son:

Read three beautiful poems about Barbara and her son at Hyperlexia Literary Journal.

Barbara: April is National Autism Awareness Month, and the reason I have all these gluten-free recipes is that being gluten (wheat, rye, oats, barley) and casein (milk, dairy products) -free has made a huge difference in our son's ability to navigate the world. He's 27 now, still living at home, and I'm still baking for him.

CHOCOLATE SHORTBREAD

1/2 cup butter, soft (or 1/4 tub Earth Balance non-dairy "butter")
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted
1 cup gluten free flour
1 tsp. xanthan gum

Mix butter, sugar, vanilla; add chocolate. Stir dry ingredients together, add. Press into a small (8-10") spring form pan. Press fork around edges to make a design; prick holes in top with fork. Bake at 300 degrees for 45 minutes. Cool in pan. Cut into wedges while warm (then cut into smaller pieces, if desired).

Note: Barbara likes Bette Hagman's Gluten-Free flour mixture.
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Barbara Crooker has written more than 625 poems published in over 1,950 anthologies, books, and magazines such as Yankee, The Christian Science Monitor, Nimrod, Poetry International, and The Beloit Poetry Journal. She's the recipient of the 2007 Pen and Brush Poetry Prize, the 2006 Ekphrastic Poetry Award from Rosebud, the 2004 WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the 2003 Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and many more. She's been nominated an amazing 26 times for the Pushcart Prize and also received a 1997 Grammy nomination for her part in the audio version of the popular anthology, Grow Old Along With Me - The Best is Yet to Be (Papier Mache Press).

She's authored ten chapbooks (two won national competitions), and published three full-length poetry collections: Radiance (2005 Word Press First Book Prize, 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize finalist), Line Dance (2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence), and More (2010). Her work has been read on the BBC, the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company), and by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac over a dozen times. You can find many of Barbara's poems online, referenced at her official website.

a. forest/flickr

♥ I love this:

What more can a person
hope for, in this world of a thousand sorrows,
than a life that was made for song, than a body
sometimes able to take wing?

~from "My Life as a Song Sparrow," included in MORE, one of two prizes offered in my Poetry Book Giveaway.

♥ To listen to Barbara read "Ode to Chocolate," click here.

♥ Other Barbara poems at alphabet soup: Patty's Charcoal Drive-In, Nocturne in Blue, Ode to Olive Oil.

♥ Previous Potluck Poets: April Halprin Wayland, Carol Weis, JoAnn Early Macken, Heidi Mordhorst, Diane Mayr, Jessica Swaim, Irene Latham.

Copyright © 2011 Jama Rattigan of jama rattigan's alphabet soup. All rights reserved.

friday feast: loving the blues

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 13:12:33 GMT

"Crooker has an extraordinary ear for the sounds of words. The reader's ear leaps up in delight at the alliteration, assonance, consonance and near rhymes . . . " ~ Diane Lockward

"Twilight on the Seine" by WPK1054/flickr

Have you ever tried to catch time in a bottle?

With "Nocturne in Blue," Barbara Crooker beautifully captures twilight in one of my favorite cities in the world.

This poem was inspired by a request from the sitter who was hired to stay with Barbara's autistic son while she was away in Paris with her husband. As she considers the request, she ruminates on past and present, as well as the light and dark moments this fading time of day brings to mind.

I love how Barbara has distilled an elusive feeling, at once personal and universal, in the small yet expansive space of a single poem. With her vivid images, captivating diction and carefully measured cadence, she's succeeded in making time stand still.

"A City Wakes at Night" by moonlight on celluloid/flickr.

NOCTURNE IN BLUE
by Barbara Crooker

She asked me to bring her back a stone
from Paris, where even the dirt is historic,
but I wanted, instead, to find her the color
of l'heure bleu, the shimmer of twilight

with the street lamps coming on, the way they keep
the dark back for just a little while, the reflections
of headlamps and taillights, red and gold, on the Champs
d'Élysees wet with rain and a fog rising.

And there's the way the past becomes a stone,
how you carry it with you, lodged in your pocket.
The blue light deepens, evening's melancholy shawl,
the wide boulevard of the Seine, the way the stones

of the monuments become watery, ripple in the currents
and the wind. Everything seems eternal here,
to us from the West, who have no memory of dates
like 52 BC, 1066, the fin de siècle

as we barge on past the millennium,
history's crazy swirl, oil on pavement,
a promenade down les Grands Boulevards.
This is what I'd bring back: shadows of stones,

twilight longings, a handful of crushed lilacs
from the bar at the Closerie, some lavender de Provence,
Odilon Redon's chalky mauves, a jazz piano playing the blues,
Mood Indigo; just a condensation of blue,
distilled in a small glass bottle with a stopper,
as if it came from an expensive parfumerie,
musk of the centuries, the gathering dusk,
a hedge against night, the world that will end.

~ from Radiance, Winner of the Word Press First Book Prize (Word Press, 2005).

Ariya Hidayat/flickr

In an interview with Mike Geffner, Barbara says this about her nocturne:

Unlike many travel poems, I wrote this BEFORE the trip (my husband was receiving an award for one of his patents, presented at a gala champagne reception, plus we had a four day trip to Paris. I’d also won a prize that year for a single poem, a check in the high three figures. . . .), using snippets from guidebooks, bad novels set in Paris, magazine travelogues, phrase books, etc. in a jazz riff on l’heure bleu, letting my mind free-associate and wander, after I’d done all that background work. What was interesting and weird at the same time was that the trip unfolded pretty much like the poem. But the poem came first.

My favorite metaphor: "evening's melancholy shawl." Now I long to return to the City of Light. Mais oui!

♥ Highly recommend Mike Geffner's interview with Barbara. Lots of insight into her growth as a poet.

♥ Check out this excellent review of Radiance by Diane Lockward.

♥ Final Reminder: February 28th is the deadline to enter my No Soup for You Giveaway! Prize includes Diane Lockward's Temptation by Water, my PB Dumpling Soup, and a No Soup for You T-shirt (size L). Details here.

♥ Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is being hosted by the lovely and well-traveled author and poet, Sara Lewis Holmes, at Read*Write*Believe. Take her some lavender from Provence, and revel in the twilight!

raewillow/flickr

Copyright © 2011 Jama Rattigan of jama rattigan's alphabet soup. All rights reserved

friday feast: a bowlful of summer

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:52:14 GMT

tiny banquet committee/flickr

Today, I'm banishing all thoughts of winter and serving up a bountiful bowl full of summer.

tofutti break/flickr

I'm tossing in balmy breezes, a view of the sparkling Mediterranean resplendent in azure, cobalt and cerulean, and an enticing spread of fresh salads and crusty peasant bread. I'm channeling all this goodness because of a sublime poem I recently "devoured" in Barbara Crooker's latest book, More (C&R Press, 2010). Her poems revolve around the theme, "Always the hunger for more," which pretty much sums up my life.

jeroen knippenberg/flickr

Taste this ode, roll its words around in your mouth, and see if you're not also transformed by the beauty and sensuality of the language and the vivid images carefully arranged like a master chef's antipasto. Thanks to Barbara, I'm newly appreciative of the sacred, medicinal, cosmetic, historical and culinary aspects of what Homer called, "liquid gold." Can you tell I'm now bathed in golden light? *blink blink*

Habib Allahdad/flickr

ODE TO OLIVE OIL
by Barbara Crooker

From hard green drupes
of bitter flesh, a river
of gold and green -- From
trees bent like old women
whose leaves flash
olive drab to silver
in the hot breeze,
a bowlful of summer --

The transmutation:
flesh of the tree to liquid amber --
Picked by hand, collected in nets,
the willow baskets fill with fruit,
spill into wooden boxes,
are crushed between wheels
of stone, pits and all.

You can marry it with aceto balsamico
to dress your salad, gilding emerald
and ruby leaves -- You can ladle
it on white beans and sage, drizzle
it on sun-warm tomatoes, lace it
in minestrone, bathe garlic heads
for roasting. You can make it
into soap, rub it with mint leaves
for migraine. Take a spoonful
to prevent hangover. Mash
it with rosemary and all the pain
is gone from creaky knees.

Velvet on the tongue. The light
of late afternoons. I am eating
sunshine, spread on bread;
primroses open in my mouth.
My chin gleams yellow,
the opposite of a halo,
but one surely even the saints
would recognize and bless.

~ from MORE, published by C&R Press, copyright © 2010 Barbara Crooker. All rights reserved.

culinarycory/flickr

*swoon*

LOVE that last stanza! The entire poem is "velvet on the tongue." I'm thinking more women than men seem to write about the sensuality of food, appreciating its colors, shapes, textures, and ultimately, its primal and emotional rammifications. Do you know of any male poets who do this as well?

U_Kersting/flickr

OLIVE OIL TIDBITS

♥ Greece boasts the highest per capita consumption in the world (26 liters per person per year), and Spain is the world's largest producer (1 million+ tons/year). Italy takes the prize for most consumption overall (30% of the world's) each year.

♥ Residents of Crete consume the most olive oil per person in the world, and have the lowest death rate from heart disease.

♥ Olive trees have a life expectancy of 500 years; some trees in the Eastern Mediterranean are over 2000 years old!

♥ Athletes in ancient Greece ritually rubbed olive oil all over their bodies. *fans self*

Today's Roundup is being hosted by Mary Ann at Great Kid Books. She's serving up the full menu of this week's poetic offerings, and may or may not be wearing a halo.

Cook up something with olive oil this weekend!

Renee Rendler-Kaplan/flickr

Buon Appetito!

Click here to read some reviews of MORE!

**Related post: My PF feature about "Patty's Charcoal Drive In" by Barbara Crooker.

Copyright © 2011 Jama Rattigan of jama rattigan's alphabet soup. All rights reserved.

friday feast: your order, please?

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:18:53 GMT

          kocojim/flickr

I've loved the idea of drive-in restaurants with car hops ever since childhood.

The ones we had in Hawai'i weren't very close to home, so the few times I actually got to sit in a car and watch the car hop attach the silver tray with our burgers and fries to the driver's side window were wildly exciting.

These days, shouting your order at a little speaker box and then driving to a window to collect your food just isn't the same. Where are the cool roller skates? The feeling of being in a 50's time warp? The high suspense of watching the car hop balance the food on the tray?


          KC Waffle Dogs by charlieboy808.

I think my quintessential car hop experience was at KC Drive-In, the very first car hop restaurant in Hawai'i, whose specialty was waffle dogs. Hot dogs were encased in a sweet batter and cooked in a press. Ah, that crispy dough around the edges, and the steamy hot dog in the middle! Mmmmmmmm. Sadly, KC closed back in 2005.

I shall have to drown my sorrows in this tasty poem by Barbara Crooker, a poet I've just recently "discovered" and whom I absolutely love. A wonderful evocation of vintage cars, neon signs, endless summers and adolescence.

psychosquirrel427/flickr

PATTY'S CHARCOAL DRIVE-IN
by Barbara Crooker

First job. In tight black shorts
and a white bowling shirt, red lipstick
and bouncing pony tail, I present
each overflowing tray as if it were a banquet.
I'm sixteen and college-bound,
this job's temporary as the summer sun,
but right now, it's the boundaries of my life.
After the first few nights of mixed orders
and missing cars, the work goes easily.
I take out the silver trays and hook them to the windows,
inhale the mingled smells of seared meat patties,
salty ketchup, rich sweet malteds.
The lure of grease drifts through the thick night air.
And it's always summer at Patty's Charcoal Drive-in—
carloads of blonde-and-tan girls
pull up next to red convertibles,
boys in black tee shirts and slick hair.
Everyone knows what they want.

(Rest is here.)

Mike6CA/flickr

Okay, I've got my roller skates on and I'm coming out to you. What'll it be?

hellochris/flickr

Today's Roundup is being hosted by Kate at Book Aunt. When you see her, give her this chocolate shake:

Kari Carbon/flickr

Have fun cruisin' this weekend!

*This post served up with a side of nostalgia.

Copyright © 2010 Jama Rattigan of jama rattigan's alphabet soup. All rights reserved.