Category: Brewing

Kind of a specialized interest for a mainly literary blog, but sometimes I can’t help myself. See the Brewing section of my personal website for herbal beer recipes and more.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The guest

by Du Fu
(712-770)

It’s spring, so the water’s high
on both sides of my house.
Watch your step.
I’m used to greeting seagulls –
whole flocks of them, every day!
Please excuse the fallen blossoms.
With no other visitors,
I haven’t swept the walk.
You’re the very first guest
to enter by the wicker gate.

Living so far from the market,
our meals are plain – no
fancy dishes. And poor
as we are, our beer’s
a little stale. But
we can invite my old neighbor
to drink with us, if you’re willing.
I’ll give a holler over the fence:
“Come help us finish off
the rest of this beer!”
__________

This translation is dedicated to my friend Chris.

Beer: The Chinese word jiu refers to alcohol in any form. Since most undistilled fermented beverages in East Asia come from grains rather than fruit, it seems more accurate to refer to them as beer rather than wine.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Night drinking at the western pavilion of the Flower of the Dharma Temple

by Liu Zongyuan (773-819)

We gather at the Jetavana
Sunset Pavilion,
immerse ourselves
in drinking meditation.

The mist gives way to darkness.
Water laps against the steps.
The blossom-laden trellis glows
in the moonlight.

Never let your exhaustion show
to Venerable Inebriation.
One glance and it’s clear
which heads have yet
to turn white.
__________

This translation is dedicated to all the bloggers gathering at the Cambridge Zen Center and elsewhere in the Boston area this weekend: Beth, Pica, qB, Lorianne, Leslee and Abdul-Walid.

Jetavana – One of the first Buddhist monasteries, a converted pleasure-garden. The poet probably knows it from the opening of the Diamond Sutra, a very popular text in Tang Dynasty China: “Once, the Buddha sojourned in the Jetavana Park with an assembly of twelve hundred and fifty bhiksus…”

immerse ourselves in drinking meditation – literally, “together pour samadhi beer (rice wine)”

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Cheer

After yesterday’s post, readers might get the impression that I am lacking in holiday cheer. Far from it! In fact, I have a mugful of “cheer” right at my elbow – enough to make me sing mindlessly to the computer as I click through my blogroll. Don’t be thinking it’s some Christmas carol, though. For some reason, the tune stuck in my head right now is “How Much is that Doggie in the Window?”

*

My major Christmas present from my parents this year was a new, super-adjustable desk lamp with incandescent and florescent bulbs. It’s basic black and highly functional in design – the kind of thing favored by graphic artists, one suspects. It will replace the funky little lamp I have been using to save my eyes from the glare of the computer screen. Yes, my parents have become enablers for my blog-addicted lifestyle.

*

On our way back from getting a Christmas tree on Tuesday, we swung by the Amish store where we buy many of our staples (whole wheat flour, brown rice, basic herbs and spices, etc.). My mother gifted the women who run the store with a loaf of chocolate tea bread, which prompted immediate reciprocal gifts of a large jar of canned peaches and a little jar of hot pepper jelly. Then, just as we were about to leave, S. came running out and asked if wanted some of the ornamental kale from her garden before she got rid of it. “Sure,” I said, and took the better part of one, big plant.

The kale was limp from having been through a couple months of freezing weather, but it still smelled and tasted good and strong. I thought its festive colors would be perfect for a light, Christmas Eve supper, and in fact I was rather pleased with the recipe I came up with. I like to think of this as a brand-new holiday tradition, as I recently heard someone on NPR describe something or other.

Ornamental Kale and Walnut Sauce with Pasta

Clean and chop into 2-inch squares 4 – 6 c ornamental kale, striving for roughly equal quantities of green and purple leaves.

In a large saucepan, sauté a hellacious amount of minced garlic, about 1/4 t dried red pepper flakes and 1/2 c ground English walnuts in 1/4 c olive oil at medium-low heat for several minutes, until kitchen begins to reek. Then add kale, a couple glugs of red wine and about 1 1/2 c canned tomatoes, chopped, with juice (about 1/2 c). (Fresh tomatoes are tasteless and virtually devoid of nutritive value this time of year. Save your money.) Lid the sucker and let ‘er steam for a bit.

Meanwhile, cook pasta. I used about 12 oz whole-wheat shells, but other chunky sorts of pasta would probably work just as well. When kale is pretty much wilted, add salt (not much) and black pepper, 8 kalamata olives, slivered and half a can of reduced-sodium chicken broth. (Vegetarians can try substituting soup stock or, better yet, a good miso broth.) Give it a minute or two to heat up, then mix in the drained pasta and a buttload of parmesan or romano cheese.

*

I might’ve added something else, but I think that’s all. Some of my culinary experiments prompt my parents to say things like, “Well, that was very, um, interesting!” But this time, they both went back for rare second helpings. However, I must admit that the pairing with a raw cabbage salad was slightly unfortunate. Last night I had to be careful to keep the blankets tightly pinned to my body every time I turned over in bed, if you get my drift.

*

Now that I’ve largely gotten over my childhood greed, and prefer actually to receive boring presents so as to avoid all excitement and the loss in sleep that entails, my favorite part of holidays like Christmas is the feasting. Well, O.K., maybe I’ve just substituted one kind of greed for another. At any rate, the other new recipe I’m inordinately pleased with this year is also my own invention, though I fancy it’s fairly similar to what my medieval European ancestors may have consumed this time of year: wassail! I served it to some visitors on Wednesday night, and two out of three were highly enthusiastic. (The third objected to the high licorice content – a fair complaint, if you don’t like licorice.) I won’t give the entire recipe, since it won’t mean anything to anyone who isn’t a homebrewer. But for those who are, here’s the gruit (herbal mix used instead of hops):

-> loose-packed pint dried mugwort
-> 2 oz dandelion root, roasted
-> 1/2 oz coriander seed, crushed
-> 1/2 oz Indian sarsaparilla root (Hemidesmus indicus)
-> 2 oz wild ginger root (Asarum canadense)
-> 2 oz licorice root (“dry-hopped” in primary)
-> 1 c (4 oz) dark baker’s cocoa

I’ll probably post the complete recipe in the homebrewing section of my other website at some point. In the meantime, anyone who wants to learn more about brewing traditional, unhopped ales should persuse my misleadingly named Short Treatise on Homebrewing and the True Meaning of Gruit.

*

I feel confident in recommending this gruit because my friend Chris, who is a trained beer taster, was one of my guests on Wednesday night. He regaled us with a number of fascinating tales of his exploits in Africa, of which (owing to the lateness of the hour and the strength of the brew) I remember only this:

During a tour of a paper-making cooperative in Malawi last month, Chris said, the guide kept pointing to these very large, dark sheets hanging up to dry and saying “This paper made from the elefandong!” And each time he would laugh uproariously. Chris smiled and nodded, unwilling to admit he didn’t know what the hell the guide was saying. After the third time it happened, however, he decided to follow up. “Now, what exactly is this ‘elefandong’?”

“Elefandong? You know – elephan’ poo-poo!”

I now know what I want my first, commercially published book of poems to be printed on…

*

My older brother called yesterday with, among other things, some news about his first offspring, expected in mid- to late-January. “They’ve decided on a name!” my mother informed me last night over the purple pasta repast. “They’ve decided to call her Elanor, after a character in Lord of the Flies!”

I’m sure William Golding would be proud.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

“Such a harmlesse treasure”

Would you pay $20.00 for a plagiarized book? You might if it were over 350 years old, 1650 pages long, and weighed in at over half a stone.

I’m talking about the Dover reprint of the complete 1633 edition of The Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes by John Gerard, as revised and amended by Thomas Johnson. Ever since I picked it up at a natural history book sale two weekends ago, I’ve spent at least an hour a day poring over it.

Part of its charm lies in the illustrations, which are engravings accurate enough to use for identification in most cases. This was crucial, because a standard descriptive language for botany had yet to emerge. Another consequence of that lack is a vividness in the plant descriptions, made all the more interesting by the expressive language and idiosyncratic spelling of the Elizabethan era. Gerard’s description of the wild cucumber, for example, conveys a sense of earthiness and grotesque sexuality:

The wilde Cucumber hath many fat hairie branches, very rough and full of juice, creeping or trailing upon the ground, wherupon are set very rough leaves, hairy, sharp pointed, & of an overworne grayish greene colour: from the bosome of which come forth long tender foot-stalks: on the ends of which doe grow small floures composed of five small leaves of a pale yellow colour: after which commeth forth the fruit, of the bignes of the smallest pullets egge, but somewhat longer, verie rough and hairy on the outside, and of the colour and substance of the stalkes, wherin is contained very much water and smalhard blackish seeds also, of the bignesse of tares; which being come to maturitie and ripenesse, it casteth or squirteth forth his water with the seeds, either of it owne accord, or being touched with the most tender or delicate hand never so gently, and oftentimes striketh so hard against those that touch it (especially if it chance to hit against the face) that the place smarteth long after: whereupon by some it hath been called Noli me tangere, Touch me not. The root is thicke, white and long lasting.

Much of the text was lifted from other sources, as were almost all of the illustrations. As Johnson put it, Gerard “accommodated” virtually the entire English translation, by one Dr. Priest, of the magisterial 1583 Latin herbal by Rembert Dodoens. The illustrations for Gerard’s original (1597) edition were taken from a Frankfurt herbal, whose engraver had copied at least six earlier works, mostly Dutch. The chain of copies of copies of copies extends well back before the age of printing. At least one illustration in the 1633 edition of Gerard’s herbal has been traced as far back as a sixth century manuscript copy of the Codex Vindobonensis by Dioscorides, which is presumed to follow the original, first century work fairly closely. Thus Gerard’s Herball preserves a link, however tenuous, with Hellenistic botany.

Histories of the Renaissance tend to emphasize the rediscovery of classical authors, but what really distinguished the age in my view was the unprecedented privileging of vernacular knowledge, after centuries in which allegory and abstraction reigned supreme. One sees this quite clearly in the evolution of herbals. Many of the woodcut illustrations from the earliest printed herbals reflect a sophisticated sense of design, but betray little familiarity with the plants they supposedly represent. Less than fifty years later, in Otto Brunsel’s Herbarum Vivae Eicones, the influence of the Renaissance painters and engravers, combined with the stimulation of new discoveries from overseas, resulted in woodcuts more naturalistic and finely detailed than the illustrations in some modern field guides.

Gerard was faithful to his continental models also in the attention he paid to philology, giving not just the Greek, Latin and English names but also Dutch, German, Spanish, Italian and others. Medieval scholasticism persists in the form of a brief attempt in each chapter to describe the plant or plants in terms of “Temperature”: i.e., its place in the (to us) bizarre doctrine of the four temperaments or humors. This, along with the Doctrine of Signatures, was the Medieval Christian’s way of coming to terms with the seemingly chaotic diversity of nature. (And in fact, Gerard’s alternate title for this section is “The Nature.”)

By the end of the 17th century, the growing influence of the modern, mechanistic worldview, with its emphasis on the primacy of human reason, would leave little room for the particularistic knowledge of herbals and herbalists. It was simply too unflattering to the Western European mind to contemplate a universe in which an anthropomorphic deity would make the well-being of his favorite creations dependent on something so base as the idiosyncratic qualities of disparate plants. And, of course, the growing centralization of power put village-level herbal practitioners at increasing risk of persecution. For the sake of so-called science, with nothing tangible to replace this suddenly discredited tradition, Western medicine took a great leap backwards, not to recover for close to 300 years.

Gerard and Johnson were intersted in more than just medicine. They aimed at nothing less than a complete British botany, including naturalized plants, plus whatever could be grown in gardens or was then imported for medicinal or other purposes. Although most people value the work for its insights into Elizabethan botanical folklore, I am finding the incidental descriptions of the English countryside included in the “Place” section of many chapters almost as engaging. This passage is not at all atypical in its specificity:

The Vervaine Mallow groweth not everie where: it growes on the ditch sides on the left hand of the place of execution by London, called Tyborn: also in a field neere unto a village fourteene miles from London called Bushey, on the backe-side of a Gentlemans house named Mr. Robert Wylbraham: likewise among the bushes and hedges as you go from London to a place called the Old Foord; and in the bushes as you go to Hackny a village by London, in the closes next the town, and in divers other places, as at Bassingburn in Hartfordshire, three miles from Roiston.

[Addition by Johnson:] Mr. Goodyer found the Vervain Mallow with white floures growing plentifully in a close neere Maple-durham in Hampshire, called Aldercrofts.

Nevertheless, the final sections of each chapter, where the authors discuss “The Vertues,” remain the most entertaining parts of the text. They often convey a sense of wonder and intense engagement with the natural world on its own terms, even if much of the natural history seems archaic. For example:

Beares after they have lien in their dens forty dayes without any manner of sustenance, but what they get with licking and sucking their owne feet, do as soone as they come forth eate the herbe Cuckowpint, through the windie nature whereof the hungry gut is opened and made fit again to receive sustenance: for by abstaining from food so long a time, the gut is shrunke or drawne so close together, that in a manner it is quite shut up, as Aristotle, Aebianus, Plutarch, Pliny, and others do write.

As a homebrewer with a particular interest in herbs other than hops, I am keeping a sharp eye out for any mention of the medicinal benefits of herbal beers. Chapter 314, Of Ground-Ivy, or Ale-hoofe, contains a brief reference to the then-flourishing tradition of brewsters, or female brewers – already much-maligned figures, along with midwives, “neighbor ladies,” and of course the proverbial, tale-telling “old wives.”

The women of our Northern parts, especially about Wales and Cheshire, do tunne the herb Ale-hoofe into their Ale, but the reason thereof I know not: notwithstanding it is most singular against the griefs aforesaid [i.e., “the humming noyse and ringing sounde of the eares . . . Sciatica, or ache in the huckle bone . . . the yellow jaundice . . . stoppings out of the liver . . . all manner of inflamation, spots, webs, itch, smarting, or any grief whatsoever in the eyes, yea although the sight were nigh hand gone”]: being tunned up in ale and drunke, it also purgeth the head from rhumaticke humors flowing from the braine.

About another brewing herb, Gerard writes:

Sage is singular good for the head and braine; it quickeneth the senses and memory, strengtheneth the sinews, restoreth health to those that have the palsie upon a moist cause, takes away shaking or trembling of the members; and being put up in the nostrils, it draweth thin flegme out of the head.

It is likewise commended against the spitting of blood, the cough, and paines of the sides, and biting of Serpents….

No man needs to doubt of the wholesomness of Sage Ale, being brewed as it should be, with Sage, Scabious, Betony, Spikenard, Squinanth, and Fennell seeds.

Gerard himself, plagiarist though he might be, comes across as an earnest and enthusiastic lover of plants in his preface “To the courteous and well willing Readers.” He begins by contrasting his own search for “such a harmlesse treasure of herbes, trees, and plants, as the earth frankely without violence offereth unto our most necessarie uses,” with prospectors for gold and silver.

Harmelesse I call them, because they were such delights as man in the perfectest state of his innocencie did erst injoy: and treasure I may well terme them, seeing both Kings and Princes have esteemed them as Jewels; sith wise men have made their whole life as a pilgrimage to attain the knowledge of them: by the which they have gained the hearts of all, and opened the mouths of many, in commendation of those rare vertues which are contained in these terrestriall creatures. I confesse blind Pluto is now adayes more sought after than quick sighted Phoebus: and yet this dusty metall, or excrement of the earth (which was first deeply buried least it should be an eye-sore to grieve the corrupt heart of man) by forcible entry into the bowels of the earth, is rather snatched at of man to his owne destruction, than directly sent of God, to the comfort of this life.

Gerard did not stint in portrayals of plants for which the only “vertues” were aesthetic. He devotes many pages to detailing varieties of daffodils, tulips and sweet-williams. Of the last, he concludes that “These plants are not used either in meat or medicine, but esteemed for their beauty to deck up gardens, the bosomes of the beautiful, garlands and crownes for pleasure.” Gerard ends another chapter, on a group of orchids called fox stones, by saying that “notwithstanding there is no great use of them in physicke, but they are chiefly regarded for the pleasant and beautifull floures, wherewith Nature hath seemed to play and disport herself.” Such statements capture as well as any the generous spirit of Renaissance humanism, all too soon swept away by tides of religious intolerance, revolutionary violence and the rise of monopoly capitalism.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Stalking the wild homebrew

Long-time readers of this blog may remember me writing about my friend Chris, who’s researching brewing techniques in Africa and elsewhere. He just uploaded the latest edition of his on-line newsletter, Fermenting Revolution. The “On the Ale Trail” column compares the “real ale” movement in England with homebrewing traditions in Ethiopia:

This Ethiopian ale is called tella, and it is brewed from barley malt and the leaves of a green bush called gesho (scientific name: Rhamnus prinoides).

In the past year I have had some pleasant adventures drinking this stuff in the highland towns and villages of this ancient kingdom-nation. Just a couple weeks ago I visited the islands of Lake Tana, fabled to have once been the home of the holy Ark of the Covenant – you know, that old testament relic thing that Indiana Jones was seeking in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Well, the Ark was nowhere to be found, but I did stumble across some of the best tella I have yet to taste. Somehow that figures since this batch was brewed exclusively for the monks inhabiting this particular monastery. Somehow, men of the cloth always seem to have the best beer, be it the Trappists of Belgium or the Orthodox monks of Ethiopia.

In any case, I was glad they did. And when our guide noted that my interest had been piqued by the prospect of a taste of this brew, he offered me a large can-full straight from a huge crock turned on its side and stuffed closed with something or other. Despite the brew’s primitive trappings, I was only too eager to oblige.

It was surprisingly soft, well-filtered, pleasantly bitter, slightly herbal in aroma, and damn thirst-quenching, especially after a several hour equatorial trek.

As a brewer of gruit ales, I was most interested in the herb used in lieu of hops. A paper on poisonous and medicinal plants in Ethiopia in fact refers to Rhamnus prinoides as “hops,” but otherwise web sources indicate that R. prinoides is called “dogwood” in English – though it’s no relation to American and Asian dogwoods – and “blinkblaar” in Afrikaans. It’s very common and widespread. A medicinal database describes it as a sedative. One website I found includes a description of its cultural uses:

The chief use of this tree is magical. It is widely used by African people as a protective charm to ward off lightning and evil influences from homes and crops and to bring luck in hunting. The South Sotho name ‘Mofifi’ means ‘darkness’, and in Lesotho they say “darkness overcomes witchcraft”. This tree is also used by Africans to cleanse the blood, to treat pneumonia, rheumatism, sprains, and stomach ache, and as a gargle. It is also used in the treatment of skin complaints and respiratory infections.

Presuming that similar beliefs about this plant occur in Ethiopia, its use as a brewing herb offers a direct parallel to European folk brewing practices, where popular gruit herbs such as tansy, angelica, rue and St. John’s wort were credited with apotropaic properties.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Aedes vexans

*
Grace

On the last day of summer,
drifting slow as hope through
the thick air of evening

she chances into
the plume of CO2 from
my breath, follows it upstream

to my arm’s telltale heat.
She hovers, then slowly sinks
the last few inches straight

down into my pelt with all
her landing gear extended,
proboscis going into the skin even

as the slight craft of her body
still rides the hairs down,
her feet stretching one

by one down, down,
& I am here.
Lord, I am here.

She is beautiful & blameless
& I in a mood to share
the beer in my veins, watching

as her banded
abdomen turns dark, inflates.
A long minute later

she pulls out, rises unsteadily
& sails off singing
her single note.

Then comes a rapid patter across
the field, the yard, staccato
on the porch roof &

into the woods – suddenly
it’s pouring & the treetops
are bending, swaying under

the weight of it
before the first drops reach
the forest floor.

A wheal rises where
the mosquito took the only
blood supper of her

purposeful life. While I sit
waiting for God knows what
it has fallen to me,

what she no longer needs:
the goad of her saliva.
Her fierce itch.
__________

For a place-based essay on mosquitoes by another central Pennsylvania writer, see here.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Barley wine poems

Yesterday afternoon and early evening I permitted myself to get a little deep into my cups for the first time since July 2, and just as I did then, I took a notebook out on the porch with me. This time I was drinking a spiced barley wine that I bottled way back in December 2002, after a year and a half in the cask (actually a glass carboy). I hadn’t been too impressed with it on previous tastings, but perhaps it just hadn’t aged enough.

I found myself jotting down short poems, or the notes for poems, with the kind of fury I can otherwise only manage first thing in the morning. Some of them don’t seem too bad. With some, I’m not sure now exactly what I had in mind. But maybe that’s all right.

UPDATE: Still revising as of Friday morning. It IS all in the editing!

A gnat falls into my wine.
I sip around him.
After a while the pin-
prick flotsam washes
against the side
& sticks fast.
Revives.
Crawls all
the way up to
the rim. Inspired,
I down the rest of the wine
in two big gulps.
__________

That gnat must not have been
a poet, to survive such
a baptism in wine. I raise
the glass it escaped from
in solemn tribute,
resolve to keep drinking
until the moon comes up.
__________

Cicada drone. A flicker’s
namesake call. Carolina
wren’s insistent zipper.
Crickets, crickets, crickets.
The first desultory katydid.

It’s not just in my head,
this hum,
this buzz.
__________

Drinking on the porch with
my feet propped up,
I forget myself.
What beautiful arches
you have, I murmur.
And the toes – what fine
fat targets. Ten
bleary half-moons
glimmer back.
__________

Six o’clock, but
no chipmunks chipping
as they almost always do
this time of year, standing at
the mouths of their burrows.
I wonder what’s
in the news?
__________

A breeze: red
maple leaves turn
their backs.
Aspen goes wild.
White pine whistles
through its teeth.
__________

The bull thistle’s clock
has three faces:
stubbled green; florid
purple; white hair
falling out in clumps.
At the peak of flowering, half
of every bush is already dead.
My eye follows
a spicebush swallowtail
making its unrepeatable way
into the treetops.
__________

In the end, the light
goes mute, retreats
one cricket at a time.
Deep in the grass, the faint
spots where glowworms
fade in, fade out.
__________

What am I missing
by writing? What
would escape me if
I didn’t write? Wait
until it’s too dark
to write anything,
listen as the katydids
start up: first this side
then the other, night
after night.
__________

Another glass of wine,
another drowned gnat.
God or evolution,
it’s all in the editing.
__________

This whole
made world
is nothing but a conspiracy
between a rock and
a hard place, says
the all-night rain.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Drinkin’ and thinkin’

I’ve never been in the habit of writing down my thoughts and observations as they occur to me. Sometime around the age of twelve, I remember deciding that any truly important ideas couldn’t die, and if they didn’t come from me, they’d come from someone else. So that allowed me to relax and, over the years, learn how to let thoughts be, to incubate and hatch out when they were ready. If you’re hungry, make an omelet; otherwise, wait and watch and let them grow their own wings. For a guy afflicted with logorrhea, as I am, this is probably an essential attitude to have toward writing.

Since starting this weblog, however, I’ve been forced to moderate a bit. Of course, I could write a lot less than I do, but I enjoy the ad hoc, ephemeral quality of this medium so much, I find it hard to keep from giving it all I’ve got. Because giving stuff away is so much more fun than hoarding, you know (see yesterday’s poem). I see the Internet culture as a potlatch of sorts – and am distressed at all the sites that now charge for access. Anyhow . . .

Yesterday evening I decided to try the ultimate stream-of-consciousness blogging experiment. I don’t have a laptop, but with the help of a little pocket notebook and a generous quantity of homebrew, I resolved to try and record everything that occurred to me over a three-hour period as I sat on my front porch. (In case you’re curious, I’m currently working on the vat of yarrow brew that I blogged about back on May 23. I decided this past winter that bottling is a waste of time – I don’t need the “mouth-feel” of carbonation, since I grew up without soft drinks – so I just siphon it off, a half-gallon at a time, into a juice pitcher that I keep in the fridge. The important thing to know is that this is a cross between ale and mead, closer to the strength of wine than beer. The sheer quantity of yarrow takes a little getting used to, but no more so than the hops in a heavily hopped microbrew such as Hop Devil. The difference is, yarrow doesn’t make you sleepy and stupid. And being as it’s homebrew (and organic), I don’t have to worry about waking up with a hangover the next morning unless I really overdo it.)

So here’s the transcript, edited as little as possible. I’ll use [brackets] to indicate editorial additions. I started right around six p.m.

I am reading from The True Subject: Selected Poems of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, translated from the Urdu by Naomi Lazard. The poem “Before You Came” just blows me away! I wonder if he knew the Zen saying about how, when one gains satori, the mountains go back to just being mountains again?

[Before You Came
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Before you came things were just what they were:
the road precisely a road, the horizon fixed,
the limit of what could be seen,
a glass of wine no more than a glass of wine.

With you the world took on the spectrum
radiating from my heart: your eyes gold
as they open to me, slate the color
that falls each time I lose all hope.

With your advent roses burst into flame:
you were the artist of dried-up leaves, sorceress
who flicked her wrist to change dust into soot.
You lacquered the night black.

As for the sky, the road, the cup of wine:
one was my tear-drenched shirt,
the other an aching nerve,
the third a mirror that never reflected the same thing.

Now you are here again–stay with me.
This time things will fall into place;
the road can be the road,
the sky nothing but sky;
the glass of wine, as it should be, the glass of wine.]

~
[Watching a great-spangled fritillary chase a cabbage white:] Butterfly’s flight has been shown to be random [through wind tunnel experiments] – true randomness in Nature is a rare & difficult thing – Is there a sense in which we can see randomness, then, as a gift of God, rather than as a repudiation of Creation?
~
The tragic thing about drinking (or any drug taking) is that one has the most fun in the transition between the two states, “normal” and altered. Drunkenness itself represents a vain attempt to recapture that initial “wow” feeling of a good buzz, which is of necessity ephemeral. The alcoholic is a tragic idealist. To drink regularly without succumbing to alcoholism, one needs to become a comic realist – to embrace ephemerality & then let it go, not attempt to possess it
~
Drinkin’ & thinkin’ = drinkin & stinkin’? [This is a reference to a blues song.] Or Winken & Blinken & Nod (zzzz). Rene Dubos once confessed he could only write while drunk on wine. Dude, that is so French!
~
Male cardinal in late afternoon sun, gnatcatcher on elm branch, goes down for a bath. I hear goldfinches but can’t see them. When are they going to pair off, start nesting? Not as many bull thistles in my yard this year. How much thistledown does one goldfinch nest require?
~
Right now I want NOTHING. Happy stuppor [sic]!

O.K. I take that back. I want another drink! More more MORE! (But if they’re [sic] weren’t any, I’d be fine with that. This glass is it until I draw more from the carboy, boy.)
~
I like the way a nice buzz takes my mind off SEX, and related desires, lets me just enjoy the moment.
~
My God, I just SAW a no-see-um!
TI-NY!
And now, a tiny smudge on my wrist.
For its memorial, just this ITCH.
~
As soon as I leave the porch to take a leak, a deerfly zooms in, starts orbiting my head. Damn I miss my dreads, fuckers could never bite through that. That was, like, Daoist: do nothing, let Nature take its course, and filth will repel filth: the homeopathic approach.
Go find a deer, motherfucker.
~
On the way back from pissing, I pick up the wine bottle with the beebalm flower in it. No hummingbirds all day – except I just saw one at the edge of the woods. (They have to have a nest nearby, with all the crazed courtship flights I’ve been seeing.) Set bottle w/flower down on the other stack chair. Voila! I have company!
~
THIS WRITING IS INTERFERING WITH MY DRINKING. (Think first, than write. If possible.)
~
Chipmunk clucking. He too must be in need of a good trance. [Note: this is my own theory. Conventional wisdom says that chipmunk chipping is purely territorial. Bullshit. They’re so tightly wound, I think they need to do it to calm their little triphammer hearts. I have watched chipmunks cluck (as I prefer to call it) from close quarters on numerous occasions. It sure looks like they’re zoning out!]
~
Hey, there’s the porcupine – long time, no see! Climbing my poor elm tree. Wonder if she has a porcupette under the house. (How do you pet a porcupette?) Quills shine in the evening sun. she moves around to the back of the tree, maybe to avoid the sun in her eyes? Now back in the sun for an instant: a reddish-brown tinge down under the quills, beautiful! (Red, white, brown, gray: the same range of colors as my beard) – Almost to the top –
~
A chickadee troika right beside the porch, dee dee dee WHACK – as one flies into the window behind me, another in hot pursuit. Love triangle? Or just the usual dominance/submission games. (sigh) Nature is SO unenlightened!
~
Now that I look at it, this elm does seem mighty SPARSE up top. Time for a collar [aluminum flashing to keep the porcupine from climbing it]?
~
Zoom! Speak of the hummingbird . . .
~
Oriole has the center stage now. Goldfinches have moved off. Other random chips & chirps. If I had MORE BEER, I could stay out until the thrushes tune up!
~
FAIZ is so GREAT – why didn’t I see this before? [I have owned the book for years, but wasn’t overly impressed on previous readings.]

“The birds that herald dreams
were exiled from their song,
each voice torn out of its throat.
They dropped into the dust
even before the hunter strung his bow.

“Oh, God of May, have mercy.
Bless these withered bodies
with the passion of your resurrection,
make the dead veins flow with blood.

“Give some tree the gift of green again.
Let one bird sing.”

[This is the latter half of the poem “When Autumn Came,” a political poem (in part)]

(the translator Naomi Lazard must be a true poet too)

~
Porcupine hunching down a limb (I hear it first, then look) – rests in crotch for half a minute, ascends other limb.
We have this much in common: we both love trees!
~
P. climbs four feet up & stops, does nothing for many minutes, wedged in another crotch. a snooze?
~
O.K., I’ve had enough – taste beginning to creep under my tongue (need water) [But see below.]
~
7:30 – birds quieting down – just vireo, goldfinches
~
Ten minutes later, P. still hasn’t moved. I think I will make fettuccini puttanesca for supper. But first, I feel an obligation to sit here and watch night come on. Sun now in tops of trees.
~
What was it my mother said, animals spend [on average] 60% of their time doing NOTHING? I believe it!
~
The pathos of drinking – one yearns to join Su T’ung-Po, Li Po, those fleeting moments they rendered immortal (for all practical purposes) – how I wish I could go back in time! But you know that THEY FELT THE SAME WAY – that pathetic nostalgia. “Drink sake and weep.” [This is a reference to the tanka poems in praise of sake by Otomo No Tabito (665-731). An example (Hiroaki Sato, tr.):
Better than to say things like a wise fellow, it seems, is to drink sake, get drunk, and weep]
~
7:45 – Porcupine is definitely taking a snooze. It looks so trusting.
Oops, it’s shaking its head. Sneezing, I think.
The sun retreats up the ridgeside, & just like that I can feel the cool coming on.
Irrationally solicitous for the beebalm on the other chair. (“Can I get you a coat?”)
P. scratches its head, adjusts its embrace [of the tree].
~
I can’t believe how quickly this buzz is fading (drinking and drugging is so self-indulgent)
~
Porcupine resumes climb! It’s 7:51. I need: coat, beer.
~
8:00 p.m. back from siphoning more beer. (Poetic symmetry for a man – beer passes through a hose twice)
Porcupine has climbed all of eight feet & is sprawled out asleep on a horizontal branch.
~
8:02 – first wood thrush [singing] – soon joined by a second.
(Almost full moon won’t rise till late – how am I gonna tear myself away for supper?)
~
8:07 – thrushes quiet again. Great-crested flycatcher, WEEP WEEP WEEP WEEP WEEP (but never weepy!) A very prehistoric sound. This year I have really grown to appreciate them.
~
Train. Short-hand jazz.

No one ever invented onomatopoeia for a train whistle! All you can do is imitate – yodel, harmonica. That high lonesome thing. “Well I wish I was / In a lonesome holler . . . ” Oh right, I am.

C’mon, Mr. Tanager, give me a view.

Scolding squirrel. Cat?
~
What did I do with my fingers before I had a beard to tug on?
~
Even now that it’s July and the leaves have darkened, still so many different shades of green in view.
W. thrush off to left, cuckoo [singing] to my right.
~
Squirrel still scolding, Porcupine has ascended into canopy (I missed it, too many leaves in the way)
~
The Buddhist atheist says: There is no end to suffering. Deal with it.
~
For some reason, the cover of Hayden Carruth’s Collected Shorter Poems [on the end table beside me] has a full frontal portrait of the sphinx. King as predator. Lost his nose despite his face. Still fucking sinister.
~
If I weren’t writing, I could be talking to myself. It feels good to be putting a jag to use! BUT I could also be putting the same thoughts to work in some harmonica playing. It’s a trade-off.

Alcohol keeps you at the stage of wanting to do ten different things at once – until you pass out. Mary G. Juana is so much more intelligent! Alcohol is a drug of distraction, cannabis is a drug of attention. Polar opposites. [Note to any law enforcement officers who may happen to read this: I do not buy, sell, or grow cannabis; I haven’t gotten stoned in years. But if it were legal, believe me, I probably wouldn’t be brewing half as much homebrew as I do.]
~
8:40 already!
The other major difference is that alcohol kills time, cannabis slows it down – alcohol makes you think more slowly, hence time passes more quickly. The THIRD difference [of course] is taste! I want pot that tastes like beer!
~
8:45 – must be close to sunset, maybe already past – Thrushes have been decidedly desultory [in their singing] so far. Fuckers.
~
Thinking about what Lekshe wrote about ego & illusion. It could be right. It should be right. Why can’t I let it be right?
~
Tanager still singing, thrush a ways off, toward Margaret’s house [a derelict dwelling a quarter mile from my porch]. “Chip BANG” – that’s a tanager, all right
~
Faiz Ahmed Faiz! Poet with a rhyming name!

“If a forgotten pain
in some corner of the past
wants to burst into flame again, let it happen.”

This is better than the blooze.
~
Someone explodes a firework in the valley – can’t tell which valley, due to the reverberations off the ridges.
~
8:45 – Now the thrush [is finally calling] right here – then two more – as light dims and my book becomes hard to read (good timing)
~
9:00 – first fireflies in the grass

I run my fingers over the page, stroke these poems – in English, in Arabic [script]. Nothing. what did I expect, [miniature ridges,] mountains? The page is smooth as the cheek of a too-young lover.
~
9:03 – first bat, dropping from the tulip tree I think. Thrushes are silent. Only a song sparrow. Then nothing.
~
Hello, sister mosquito!
~
Almost too dark to write. Why it seems so quiet: daytime crickets have hushed. I realize this when the first nighttime cricket starts up.
~
9:18 – [Next-to-]last entry ’cause I can’t see! I can hear chewing from the elm tree for the first time –
Night descends –
[The nightly twin-propeller] cargo plane flies over
~
9:20 – P. climbs down tree – soft clack of claws on bark – Then leaf rustle as she heads up into the woods –
__________

AFTERTHOUGHT: An amusing experiment, not something I’d want to make a habit of. There’s something inherently dishonest about the pretense of unmediated thoughts/reactions here. If you’re going to go to the trouble to record, it makes no sense not to go ahead and select, modify, polish into more shapely and interesting essay(s) or poem(s) – like this or like this. (In both those cases, however, nothing was written down before the poems themselves. Otherwise, I find, the poetry plays second fiddle to the prose. My ultimate goal – an idealistic one, to be sure – is to be able to think entirely in poetry. To me, that would represent true, unmediated thinking.)

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Poetry or vomit?

In the course of some research this morning for a possible blog post on Indo-European concepts of fate, a note on a website led me back into one of my all-time favorite works of literature, Egil’s Saga.

I was also reminded of Egil, and the poet-protagonists of other sagas (especially Gisli and Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue), a week or two back by an essay of Eliot Weinberger’s that referenced the extreme complexity of oral composition by Old Norse poets. The essay, called What Was Formalism?, concludes with a detailed description of the eight-line stanza form that Egil specialized in.

“Viking formalism meant, for example, that to write a mere epitaph of ordinary statements and sentiments for a tomb – such as ‘Here lies a warrior famed for his virtue. Denmark will never know a more honorable sea-captain, or one stronger in battle’ – one began with a common stanza form, such as the dróttkvatt.

“This stanza form had eight lines, broken into two half-stanzas of four lines, each expressing a single thought, that were, in turn, divided into two couplets. Each line had six syllables; only three could be stressed (and Old Norse, as one can imagine, had genuine stresses). The first line of each couplet had to have two stressed syllables that began with the same sound, which was also the sound of the first stressed syllable in the next line. (The other stressed syllables could not be alliterate.) The two stressed alliterative syllables in the first line could not rhyme; but the first stressed alliterative syllable in the second line had to rhyme with another syllable in the same line to which it was not alliterative.

“The word order was completely unlike that of prose. For example, the structure of a normal prose sentence of 16 words (taking 1, 2, 3, etc., as the words in their proper prose order) looks like this in a relatively simple half-stanza:

2 4 5 3
1 8 9 6 7
12 10 13 14
11 15 16

“In a more complex poem, poetic syntax is further stretched by fragmenting and reassembling the clauses. For example, back to the sea-captain and the first half-stanza. (‘Here lies a warrior famed for his virtue . . . ‘) The poet employs a kenning, or epithet, for warrior (‘the one who carried out the work of ížrudr, goddess of battles’), and the whole sentence reads literally: ‘Under this mound is hidden the one who carried out the work of ížrudr, goddess of battles, whom the greatest virtues accompanied; most men knew that.’ (Though the Old Norse only has 15 words.)

“The poem (keeping the literal English prose syntax) breaks this into something like:

Under this mound / whom the greatest
most men knew that / virtues
accompanied / the one who carried out the work of ížrudr
goddess of battles / is hidden

” The pattern of clauses is:

1 3
4 3
3 2
2 1

“This was merely a tombstone epitaph, not a particularly memorable poem. It was written, as all poetry was, in a single line. (The ragged right-hand margin is a by-product of the availability of cheap paper.) There were no spaces between the words. The form of the poem was musically, not visually, evident – and evident to all its readers or listeners – and was only one of many such forms, most of them even more complex.”

What Weinberger fails to mention is that verses were typically composed in one’s head, ideally off the cuff; they were written down only to preserve them or to enhance their power. As in many other cultures where poetry is or was highly prized, strong memories and performative skills continued to be emphasized long after the introduction of writing systems. (Think of the classical Arabs and the Chinese.) It is not that Norse poets were illiterate – in fact, their skill in rune-carving was an integral part of their mastery of word-magic, as the following excerpt from Egil’s Saga demonstrates. This is the translation by Kneva Kunz in the massive, single-volume collection The Sagas of Icelanders (Penguin, 2000). Kunz’s translations of the verses in particular are an improvement over earlier English editions. Minimal notes explaining the kennings appear in the margin to the right; here, I’ll put them in brackets immediately following each verse. From Chapter 44:

“Bard told Egil to stop mocking him and get on with his drinking. Egil drank every draught that was handed to him, and those meant for Olvir too.

“Then Bard went up to the queen and told her that this man was bringing shame on them, always claiming to be thirsty no matter how much he drank. The queen and Bard mixed poison into the drink and brought it in. Bard made a sign over the draught and handed it to the serving woman, who took it to Egil and offered him a drink. Egil took out his knife and stabbed the palm of his hand with it, then took the drinking-horn, carved runes on it and smeared them with blood. He spoke a verse:

“I carve runes on this horn,
redden words with my blood,
I choose words for the trees
of the wild beast’s ear-roots;
drink as we wish this mead
brought by merry servants,
let us find out how we fare
from the ale that Bard blessed.

[ear-roots: part of the head; their trees: horns]

“The horn shattered and the drink spilled onto the straw. Olvir was on the verge of passing out, so Egil got up and led him over to the door. He swung the cloak over his shoulder and gripped his sword underneath it. When they reached the door, Bard went after them with a full horn and asked Olvir to drink a farewell toast. Egil stood in the doorway and spoke this verse:

“I’m feeling drunk, and the ale
has left Olvir pale in the gills,
I let the spray of ox-spears
foam over my beard.
Your wits have gone, inviter
of showers on to shields;
now the rain of the high god
starts pouring upon you.

[ox-spears: drinking-horns; rain: i.e. of spears, perhaps of poetry (or vomit?)]

“Egil tossed away the horn, grabbed hold of his sword and drew it. It was dark in the doorway; he thrust the sword so deep into Bard’s stomach that the point came out the back. Bard fell down dead, blood pouring from the wound. Then Olvir dropped to the floor, spewing vomit. Egil ran out of the room. It was pitch-dark outside, and he ran from the farm.”

I’m fascinated especially by the suggestion that poetry is something thrown up. The context here is a feast attending a religious celebration, to which Egil and his friends were not invited until the king intervened. Hence the hostility, of course, and hence also the irony of “inviter of showers.” This phrase, in fact, would seem to have a third layer of meaning, since the celebration was the disablot, or winter-time sacrifice to the disir (fates or personal guardians). Vomit as well as blood may have been a sacrament. A further irony is that, through his prowess with drinking, versifying and fighting, Egil “tempts fate” in the most audacious way – and thus serves the “the high god(dess)” far better than the ill-fated Bard.

The ancients attributed powers of inspiration to mead and any other alcoholic drink made with honey.* In fact, in Norse mythology, poetry itself is a form of mead, originally concocted by dwarves from the blood of a wise man. Odin, the patron of poets (and wise men) stole it from the giants in a way suggesting the involvement of other fluids, as well. He turned himself into a serpent, entered the bedchamber of the giantess Gunnlod, and seduced her into giving him a drink of the mead of poetry. Instead of a mere sip, however, he drank all of it in three great gulps, turned into an eagle and flew back to Asgard where he showed off his new prize/skill – that is to say, he spat it up. According to a Medievel Icelandic treatise on poetics, Snorri Sturluson’s Poetic Diction (Jean Young translation), “It was such a close shave . . . that he let some fall, but no one bothered about that. Anyone who wanted could have it; we call it the poetasters’ share.”

This belief forms the background here and in many other passages: Egil composes best under the influence.
__________

*Assuming that the translation is accurate, the drink here was probably an ale-mead hybrid called in later times a braggot, which any homebrewer can approximate with a mix of medium-dark malts, four pounds or more of honey per 5-gallon batch, and a strong Scottish ale yeast. This is a highly inebriating, not to mention nutritious, brew.