Without a deadline, how many poems wouldn't be?

What kind of deadline? Both external and self-imposed. Now, do you wish to adjust your answer?



How many meals wouldn’t be served if company weren’t invited? How did the meals different? How many dishes repeated? Marinated olives being the constant.

Does wanting to write a particular poem make the poem stronger?

What’s a weak poem? A winter sun?

The desire to say something can be huge. The desire to be heard, immense.



Cooking is an activity to satisfy a desired taste. This kind of desire is rarely wishy-washy. Shrimp with pomegranate seeds. Hot and sour soup. Lamb with peanut sauce. Blueberry pancakes. Disparate but certain.

Are poems more like pumpkins or Brussels sprouts?

Ludicrous but so is giving away the best of you free. It’s called submitting poetry, as one writer told me. A poet who doesn’t submit. I’m with the gals who give it away, fail and face rejected. Blessed the exception.



Today, cooks fear a dry turkey. My advice: sip a beverage, get a couple of poems ready to submit while the meal roasts. Or skip the bird completely. Invite the brave. Avoid the naysayer.

Is poetry worth giving thanks for?

Also the 3Fs: food, friends, family.

Is the way we talk about poetry taking its clues from wine?

Blending is rampant. Structure is discussed and revered. Describing wine is a poetic genre.


Not to mention the paring of wine and food and poets: schools have been built. Palates debated.

When are too many words too many?

For a poet that is. Is rest from writing a good thing? What signifies
a gluttony of letters? Pretension? An overdoes? As in, “perhaps, one should consider…”



Much easier and graphic to know when too much food (eaten) is too much consumed.

Does a particular cadence in a poem make the work more sophisticated?

Word as sound. Now think sound as fabric. Silk over fleece. Velour over cotton. Polyester poetry?



Cadence in cooking. Gently heating black beans for hours – gurgles and tiny spits. Grilling chicken marinated with lemon, lemon thyme, pepper, and olive oil -- chatty verses the introspective sliced persimmon also being grilled. Please don’t underestimate the role of surveillance in poetry & cooking.

Is an interpretation of a poem by the poet wobbly at best?

Three-legged stool? A game of one less chair?



A cook’s prejudice interprets the meal. Less salt/more pepper (always). A particular hue. Texture.

Do most poets write on a single theme?

Nine out of ten times? Or nine years out of any decade? Perspective is personal and singular and in the execution, plural. Word choice. Word order. Events do alter. Like aging. And the experience of taste.




If seasonal were not the issue, would most cooks favor a particular food -- morning, noon, and night. This is personal: there is no dish, dear, in which I would not insinuate a Fuyu persimmon.

Poets aren't torch singers, are they?

Why is a poet’s reading often problematic. Eyes downcast or theatrics over the top –neither, please. Nor, not too glib or predictable the subject. Page and performance, a balanced mystery.




Recipe and meal. Mouth weds desire. Ripe fruit is always welcomed.
Necessary.

Are anti-war poems a subset of love poetry?

Not in the troubadour tradition but certainly love as life-sustaining. Healthy poetry for a healthy heart, for a playful mind. Take your words outdoors today; walk them cheerily. By the way, does love love to rant?



The mouth loves poetry. Loves healthy food. Playful food, too. Picnics, in particular.

When you hear a poet read her work, do you then read it differently?

Hear it in a different way? Understand it in a different way? The original is meaning and voice.



What is the original voice of a cook? Signature dish. Can you duplicate?

Is inquiry the linchpin for poetry?

Sorry if you missed Mark Doty's reading at SF Zen Center last evening. If you were there you recognize the rhetorical question. Otherwise read his FIRE TO FIRE, New and Selected Poems.





By the way, cooking is inquiry (of taste) and satisfaction (of hunger). Not much is rhetorical about food, I’d say.

Does a poem bend to will?

Does it bend to editing?
At its core is poetry like bamboo – quick-growing and flexible?




Perhaps, a poem is more akin to rice.

When you find unexpected moments to work on a poem are these stolen or freed?

Liberated verse or purloined stanzas? Does it matter. To the page? To the screen?


About food. On the spur of the moment whipping up a brown rice salad (because the rice is left-over). How does the pomegranate feel about having its seeds liberated in a moment of stolen time?

Do you know of a study comparing & contrasting poems written on the first and the last day of the month?

To what avail? Words are fuel but do studies feed the belly?




Word-rush and sugar-rush. Day after Halloween. Calories for a trilogy.