Reading and Writing and the Occasional Recipe

Where do our words go?

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:46:00 +0000

This Sunday afternoon, March 14, I’m reading in Plymouth in “Poetry: The Art of Words,” the Mike Amado Memorial Series. The series is named for someone I never met, but to whom I am connected in a strange and humbling way.

One thing I know about Mike Amado is that one of the great pleasures of his brief life was writing poetry. Mike was ill for most of his life and died of kidney disease when he was just 34. He lived in Plymouth and was a musician and poet, the author of two collections, “Poems: Unearthed from Ashes” and “Rebuilding the Pyramids.”

Mike was also a member of the Bagel Bards, an informal group of Boston-area poets that meet on Saturday mornings, usually around an Au Bon Pain table in Davis Square. And that’s where he and I have a connection. I’ve sat around that table, too, and, when I wrote a column for The Boston Globe, I once wrote about the group. Mike read the column, found a poetry home at that table. The contacts he made there led to wider publication of his work and to frequent readings. He published his two books, started a reading series in Plymouth, attended a summer writing conference, and became a presence among area poets. Then he died, in early 2009.

His friend Jack Scully told me all this this later. It was Jack who had shown Mike my column and it is Jack who keeps the reading series going, with featured readers and an open mike.

Here is an excerpt from Mike's poem "An Offering of Eagle Feathers," which was published in Wilderness House Literary Review 4/4:

Show me the path through the pines, Let me feel
raindrops from young, green maples drape
my shoulders as I freely walk home again.
Here I will lay eagle feathers before we all become extinct.

So this Sunday when I’m the featured poet, I’ll be feeling the connection I have with this young poet I never met. But I’ll also be thinking about how our words, written and spoken, ripple out from our small circles and end up in places we cannot predict. We can never know their impact, good or bad. We can only know that they take on a life of their own. Sometimes we find out a little about where they go and whom they touch. And we can hope that they go out into the world to do good things.

Art Appreciation

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:32:00 +0000

I did a reading yesterday at the Concord Free Library. As invariably happens, I found myself feeling grateful for the turnout of people who came to hear poetry. To really hear it, in the most profound sense. To open themselves to the experience and take in the sound and sense of someone else's words.

It was a fresh reminder of our human hunger for art at all levels, which runs so sadly counter to all the knee-jerk budget slashing that throws arts programs overboard first in any school budget cutbacks.

I was thinking of that on Saturday night when my friends Erica and Don and I watched a fascinating documentary film called “Herb and Dorothy.” It’s about Herb and Dorothy Vogel, who, on modest civil service incomes, amassed an art collection now housed at the National Art Gallery in Washington, with overflow pieces being parceled out throughout the 50 states. It is a story of people who simply loved art and who took the time to pay attention, to look carefully, and also to talk with artists about their work.

Although the experience begins in pleasure, it’s a hugely generous thing to open oneself fully to art. To try to understand what was behind the creation of a work involves the kind of deep connection between people that lets us bring the best of ourselves to each other. I often find it useful and fun--especially when confronted, say, with a painting or with music that feels challenging--to try to imagine what its creator might have felt in the process. What was he or she thinking about? Trying to do? Wanting us to notice?

I was in London recently and, on walking into the British Museum, was drawn to an exhibit of one of the museum’s oldest items, a pair of reindeer, apparently swimming. It was carved into the tip of a mammoth tusk, possibly 13,000 years ago. Why? There is no way to know. We may guess that it was some kind of totem. Or it might have been carved in tribute to the animals that provided sustenance. But there is also the possibility that the carver created it solely as an expression of the world around him or her. Art! Our earliest evidence of its centrality in our lives.

Maybe it’s art that, at the deepest level, makes us human. And, whether or not we recognize it, our willingness to experience art, as much as our ability to make it, is our most basic human connection.

The time of our lives

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:19:00 +0000

I have the honor of being a guest blogger on the blog of Melusine, an online journal of literature and art. (I am also delighted to have a poem in the current issue.) The blog post is about boredom, something I always dismissed, but am now taking a new look at.

A few years ago someone said that time plays a major role in my poetry. If that’s the case, I’m not surprised. It is a major theme in my life--my use of time, our allotted time, the accumulation of time. What I was thinking about when I wrote the piece on boredom was how we have so many tiny and often inconsequential demands on our time that we don’t even have enough time to get bored, and I think that’s a loss.

I used to have no tolerance for boredom. “Only boring people are bored,” was my watchword. But I’ve begun to think that what used to be boredom may now be more aptly called “unstructured time.” Every minute of our lives seems to have its demands, its--as Keats said in a way-pre-Google age--"irritable reaching after fact." Few of those demands are important and most of them are set up by us.

I thought about this--and wrote about it--recently when I found myself tempted by a shiny new smartphone. I have to confess that I have still not entirely closed the door on that, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to make my decision in a way that still keeps me in charge of my time.

So here’s my new thinking on boredom. If we fill up every available minute, maybe we’ll never experience boredom. But maybe, too, we’ll never have the available time to think the thoughts that would be most creative or would make us most aware or would in some way add to the pleasure and significance of our lives. Maybe the free time, the unconnected time, to be a little bored would be the best gift we could give ourselves.

Here’s a challenge I'm setting for myself and offering to you, too: unplug a little. Not completely, just a little. See what comes into your mind. Maybe think of it as the new and improved boredom.

“How do you read a book of poems?”

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:10:00 +0000

That’s what my friend Michael asked in an e-mail he sent me today. Michael is a major reader, devouring books in astonishing numbers, across genres and centuries, and he is a thoughtful reader whose note asked important questions about reading poetry.

So he asked how I read a book of poems. “Do you read it straight through or dip into it now and then? Do you read it with pencil and paper, taking notes, or just immerse yourself in it? Do you go back and read specific poems or the whole volume? My dilemma is how to retain something of the language, beauty, images, sounds, etc. that make poetry so wonderful.”

My first response was, “aaaah.” What poet is not heartened, cheered, thrilled, by the thought of readers out there who want to know how best to approach our work? Who want to bring themselves to it with their most careful attention?

How do you read poetry? I can answer only for myself. As a poet I have been gratified to have many people tell me they read my first collection, “Afterwords,” straight through. Unlike many poetry collections, “Afterwords” has a strongly narrative line, and I have been glad to know that it has so often been read start to finish. I think that a reader gets it in a different, maybe better, way reading that way because it is very specifically “about” something, the illness and death of my husband and the reimagining of my life in the shadow of that loss which has the element of time.

My second book, “Container Gardening,” is a more typical collection, with thematic sections, but with an overall relatedness among the poems that may be subtle enough to be apparent only to me. I can picture it being read piecemeal, though again, I hope it is sometimes read cover to cover.

I obsessed over the selection of poems to go into my books and their order. I think that’s almost always the case, with choices being made carefully, often in consultation with editors, fellow poets, and trusted readers. Which poems group together most cohesively? And then, which one builds on the mood of the one before? Which gives the reader a breath? Which complements or varies the length, the sound, the shape? The results of those decisions can be seen only by the reader who takes in the book as it was put together to be read.

As a reader, though, I have to confess that, though I ultimately end up reading front to back, I often start with the box of chocolates approach, paging through for a favorite I’ve heard or scanning the table of contents to see if there is a poem calling out to be looked at first.

I don’t read poetry--or fiction either, for that matter--with pen and paper in hand, although I often leave little bookmarks in both at pages I know I’ll want to revisit, maybe read to someone else. I think Michael’s word is the perfect one here: “immerse.” Poetry is as much about sound as it is about content. In order to really get it, you do need to immerse yourself in it, free yourself from distraction and give yourself up to the words.

Most of all, as a reader, I want to be alone with the sound of the poem. Immersed.

Only connect--but how much?

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 15:48:00 +0000

It started innocently enough. I was in the Verizon store on a quick errand, and, just for fun, I asked if I was at that two-year mark when I should look at a new cell phone. Sure enough, the saleschild looked up from his screen and said, “Oh, yeah.” So I wandered, flirting with the chained-down models, and found myself seduced by a cute little almost iPhone-like Palm.

I played with the stuff on the screen and visualized myself with 24/7 e-mail access. I pictured myself looking as if I belonged in this decade with a colorful phone and a cute little charging stand. And apps. Apps? Apps!

“Would you use it mostly for texting and e-mail or would you want to have a lot of games?” the salesboy asked.

“I’d be using it mostly as a phone.” My answer was disappointing to us both.

“Oh.” But he tried to regroup, showed me lots of cool features. I could picture myself using one or two of them. I left intending to think about it, ask around, learn more.

But when the Verizon spell wore off, I was left with the suspicion that maybe I didn’t want to be followed day and night by all my e-mail. The spam? Those nice chatty ones from friends that serve as mini-visits--I wouldn’t want those to demand my attention just when I’m out doing something else.

One of my favorite things about e-mail is its ability to wait for you. It’s not a ringing phone; you get it when you want it, when you have time to read it. I appreciate that as a sender, knowing that I’m not interrupting someone, and as a receiver, having that control over my time.

Time. That’s the thing. The one definite, finite commodity of our lives. The one thing that’s ours to use, to waste, to make of whatever we choose. Do I really want to add a new level of outside demands on it?

It’s especially too easy for writers to spend their days avoiding the time they have. “Now I’ll sit down to write...but first I’d like a cup of tea...and maybe I’ll do the Times crossword puzzle/ read one more chapter/ throw in a load of laundry...” And that’s even before checking the blogroll (which, unlike the morning newspaper, has no end) or having the stray thought that demands satisfaction from Google. Then maybe just a quick peek at the e-mail--oh, the pooch pottie and I could change my life today with a degree in medical records...And all that is without the phone ringing.

In this morning’s New York Times Sunday Styles section, there’s an article about people bucking the trend toward more apps on their phones. One woman is quoted as saying, “There’s this sense that I’m missing out on something I didn’t even know I needed.” Exactly. Just because they’ve built it, do we have to come?

I’m not sure what my decision will be, but right now I’m leaning away from the adorable little Palm and toward just a basic old phone. I know I’ll have regrets about all that missed coolness and cuteness. (If only there was a phone that looked cute and cool.) But how much of my life do I want to make available to outside demands? It’s my time. I think maybe I want to decide how to use it.

"Mazel tov!"

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:02:00 +0000

I’ve just finished reading a strange, exhilarating, and fascinating book, “36 Arguments for the Existence of God,” a novel by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.

It is the story of Cass Seltzer, who is drifting in the academic still waters of his specialty, the psychology of religion, when he is struck by zeitgeist lightning. He writes a book, “The Varieties of Religious Illusion,” that makes a case for reason over faith. With religion on everyone’s mind, in art as in life, the book becomes a bestseller, bringing its author fame, fortune, a teaching offer from Harvard, and a challenge to debate the existence of God.

Around Cass revolve a constellation of academic types, including his unbearably beautiful, unbearably brilliant lover; his mentor who is just plain unbearable; a vibrant earth-mother character; and a remarkable child caught in an impossible situation. The book is filled with theological philosophy and send-ups of same. It is a delicious read, veering between thesis-friendly dialogue and chick-lit pacing, existential ponderings and egomaniacal panderings. It is curious, original, and ultimately makes a strong case for our complicated, flawed, and endlessly interesting species.

The book’s abundant Jewish references, coupled with Goldstein’s odd tendency to mention the upper lip of nearly every character, reminded me of an old Jewish legend about the philtrum, that little cleft below the nose. According to the story, in the months before a child is born the angel Gabriel visits the child and teaches him or her everything about the world. But just before birth, Gabriel touches the child on the upper lip and all the knowledge is instantly forgotten. The cleft remains as a sign of everything we spend our lives relearning. This probably has nothing to do with the book, but I love the legend. And the book is, at its heart, about what we believe, what we know, and how we make sense of the world. And maybe about how we try to relearn those lessons from the angel.

In the book’s final scene (this is not a spoiler) people are joyously greeting each other with cries of “Mazel tov!” Although, in Hebrew and Yiddish, this translates into “good luck,” it is actually used, as Goldstein notes, to congratulate someone on whom fortune has already smiled. And so “mazel tov” to me and to those among you who have already had the pleasure of reading this book. To those who have not, “mazel tov” to you for getting this recommendation!

Reading the Sunday papers

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:26:00 +0000

Some days the news gives you news in unintended ways. In today’s New York Times I read the obituary of a poet named Abraham Sutzkever, whose beautiful, haunting, and heart-breaking work I discovered only recently. He wrote in Yiddish about the Holocaust and the lost world of Eastern European Jewry.

Here is one of his poems, translated by Jacqueline Osherow:

Written on a slat of a railway car:

If some time someone should find pearls
threaded on a blood-red string of silk
which, near the throat, runs all the thinner
like life's own path until it's gone
somewhere in a fog and can't be seen —

If someone should find these pearls
let him know how — cool, aloof — they lit up
the eighteen-year-old, impatient heart
of the Paris dancing girl, Marie.

Now, dragged through unknown Poland —
I'm throwing my pearls through the grate.

If they're found by a young man —
let these pearls adorn his girlfriend.
If they're found by a girl —
let her wear them; they belong to her.
And if they're found by an old man —
let him, for these pearls, recite a prayer.

From Epitaphs 1943-44

When I turned from the Times’ news section to “News of the Week in Review,” I saw its lead story about political anger. It was illustrated with some of the most disturbing photographs I’ve seen in a long time. The front page photo is from a Tea Party rally. Pictured front and center are three women not far off my age cohort. One holds a sign that reads, “Gun Control is being able to hit your target.” The jump has a photo, too, this one from the 1964 presidential campaign. A woman identified as a Barry Goldwater supporter holds a “USA Love It or Leave It” poster. Her face is so contorted with anger that she looks more animal than human. (For some reason, the editors have selected women’s faces here. Food for thought. No comment.)

Left me thinking about hate in its various historical moments and incarnations and what it does to us.

The occasional recipe: oatmeal

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:56:00 +0000

It’s been a bad week. From truly disastrous news about Haiti and desperately ill friends to the minor annoyance of a cold. And, of course, I’ve yet to climb out of the slough of despond caused by now having a senator who is pretty much anti-everything except guns, trucks, and waterboarding. Ya-hoo.

Just one remedy: let’s make a bowl of hot oatmeal and curl up with a good book. This sounds a little pathetic, but trust me on this. The oatmeal I am proposing here is not the old favorite rolled oats, quick or old-fashioned. That’s still fine and indispensable for making cookies. But I’d like to suggest a game-changer in the oatmeal department--steel cut. I’m a recent convert, so of course I want everyone to know about this. You may already know, in which case why didn’t you tell me?

Steel cut oatmeal is to rolled oats as a good French baguette is to Wonder bread. You still want the sliced white sometimes for grilled cheese sandwiches to have with your tomato soup. But the baguette is the staff of a whole different life. Likewise steel-cut oatmeal. It’s chewy and nutty and so delicious that I’ve just been throwing in some raisins or a precious few from my frozen stash of last summer’s Maine blueberries and not bothering with the brown sugar, maple syrup, or other additive possibilities. Okay, it does take 30 minutes to cook, but--and this is how it’s revolutionized my mornings--you can cook up a batch, keep in the refrigerator, and take out a serving at a time all week. You just zap it in the microwave for two minutes and--ta-da--breakfast! Or lunch or even a lazy-night supper.

The whole recipe is this: a two to one ratio of water to oats (that’s what it says in real recipes, but I often add a little more water--you can figure it out for yourself.) Some people cook it in milk or half milk, half water. I’m sure that’s delicious, but I just use water. A little salt. Then thirty minutes on the stove with occasional stirring involved. And you’ve got it.

It’s hearty and nutritious and it makes you feel as if at least one thing is going right first thing in the morning. Try it and let me know.

What is art good for?

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:42:00 +0000

Today was the final day of the Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan and I was glad I got there to see it. The Guggenheim is stunning, though, as my companion observed, maybe better for looking at people looking at art than for actually looking at art. There’s often an assumption with Frank Lloyd Wright buildings that human comfort can be sacrificed for artistic integrity. Perfect tradeoff in this case, even though the sloping ramp can feel like an uphill slog and the work doesn’t always seem shown to best advantage. And in this exhibit you get “looking at people looking at art” at its best: across the sky-lighted space you see people in dark silhouette against canvases exploding with color--quite amazing.

I read, in the wall text, about how as a young man Wassily Kandinsky had two experiences that determined his artistic mission--seeing one of Monet’s Haystack paintings and hearing a performance of Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin. He came away, it said, determined to create an emotional reaction through color and composition and, like music, in the absence of a recognizable subject. And above all, he believed in the transformative power of art to inspire human beings to a higher level of living.

As I walked the ramp and looked at painting after painting, I came upon several school groups clustered with their teachers in front of paintings. In each case, hands were eagerly being raised and ideas offered about the work. In each case the group was spending time looking carefully at paintings that offered no easy way in. It made me think of all the school budgets in which art education is one of the first things to go.

It made me wonder what the “takeaway” is from a school day. What, years from now, will those children remember? Photosynthesis? The rules of grammar? (I hope so!) The Treaty of Ghent? Certainly all of these. But more. How about the ability to look hard at a baffling painting and try to find something in it that tells them something new about their lives? How about the ability to appreciate what art can do?

Where the poem comes from: Mary Bonina

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:15:00 +0000

I probably first saw Mary Bonina’s work back when I wrote a literary column for The Boston Globe and did a story on the trail of poetry and prose inscribed on monoliths along the MBTA Orange Line. She wrote the poem that’s outside the Green Street Station. I can only imagine how satisfying it is to see your words carved in stone!

I talked with Mary on a fall day just as she was getting ready to go on a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts , where I've also had the pleasure of working. It was a little cool but not so much that we couldn’t sit outside at Cafe Pamplona in Harvard Square hunched over our hot coffees. She told me about the pleasures and challenges inherent in switching among genres, in her case fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and memoir She is the author of a poetry chapbook, “Living Proof.” Here is her poem, “English Lesson Plan: Present Perfect,” published in a 1991 issue of Hanging Loose, along with her description of how that poem came to be written.

“One of the many jobs I have held while trying to balance a writing life with financial needs, has been that of freelance ESL teacher to recent immigrants in their workplaces, mostly hospitals and banks in Boston. I was teaching adult students new to the U.S. from China, Haiti, Central America, Africa, Sicily, Poland, and other countries, students who spoke some sixteen different languages and held a variety of positions, including clerk, cashier, cafeteria worker, phlebotomist, research doctor, custodian, patient transporter, parking attendant, and nurse’s aid. Many of those I taught had had professional positions in the countries they’d left, but coming to the United States and not knowing English, most of them had taken service jobs.

“I loved teaching these students and I had great empathy for their situation. I suppose I was motivated to help them partially by my own family’s experience, immigrating from Sicily and Ireland, and having to negotiate a new culture and language themselves. So I took my role seriously, always prepared with a lesson plan I had labored over.

“Often though, after just a few exchanges of dialogue, I would have to abandon my script. Desperate to learn the language, to be able to navigate in a new culture, my students would interrupt me with their own pressing needs for specific vocabulary or grammatical construction; and when they did follow my lead, they asked questions and offered interpretations I had not anticipated when planning my classes. Eventually, I accepted and gained more confidence and got comfortable with allowing what I’d initially seen as interruption.

“I began to find it exhilarating, letting my teaching benefit from an improvisational style. I began to feel like a jazz sax player must, taking my cues from my students, and creating something new, building upon what they offered me. I felt like I was writing a poem, recognizing that familiar process of one word, one thought, leading to another -- often unanticipated – recognizing endless possibilities and finally settling on specific ones, when realizing a moment of revelation. I learned how to encourage the flow, to go with the stream of consciousness, and how to bring it back to my intended lesson.

“ The poem “English Lesson Plan: Present Perfect” is one from a collection of poems called Lunch in Chinatown, after the fact that one of my teaching sites was on the edge of Chinatown and students there often attended my classes during lunch break, “brown-bagging it.” This poem, as the title suggests, is about teaching the present perfect tense, a task that has stymied many an English teacher, even those working with native speakers of the language. It just might be the best example in the collection that illustrates the way I would encourage a riff to take its natural course, yet bring it back eventually to the original theme.”

English Lesson Plan: Present Perfect

1.

The Roz Chast cartoon in The New Yorker
shows a goofy mother, father, and children
seated all in a line, pressed tight together
between the sofa arms, staring at the TV:
“The Lintners,” the caption says,
“Stuck on the sofa since 1987.”

I show it to the class, thinking: will they laugh?
The clipping is an example I use
to illustrate the present perfect tense.
It gets passed around. Everyone nods,
very, very serious about learning
the present perfect tense.

Q. “How long have the Lintners been stuck on the sofa?”
A. The Lintners have been stuck on the sofa since 1987.”
2.
Stuck on a sofa, “hypnotized” by TV, brings up new
vocabulary. I explain “to be in a trance.”
This leads to “sleepwalking,” then to “daydreaming,”
and finally to “hallucination.”

“Hallucination” inspires Margarita to tell a story:
her last job....the State Hospital....there was a man
who had lost his mind when he lost his wife.
Whenever he got angry, says Margarita,
he would hallucinate that he was still in Cuba,
still in the hot sun. He would mime
cutting sugar cane with his machete

3.
Someone is using the word “cuckoo.”
I must explain that it is the name of a bird,
and not the right word to describe someone who is ill.
The Haitians think I’m talking about the owl, a bird that
frightens them, its face, the face of a cat, the eyes....
When they say nocturne I know
their mistake, draw an owl on the chalkboard.
4.
And the lesson for the day ends this way,
me saying, “It is an owl, not a cuckoo.
Haven’t you ever seen a clock shaped like a house
and a little bird comes out of the upstairs window saying,
“Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” the exact number of times
to tell the hour? The present perfect tense, like time
goes on and on, or like the Lintners, or the man who has
been cutting sugar can ever since his wife died, or
the owl that has been awake all night long, hooting.”

Books given and stolen

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:30:00 +0000

I always make sure to have plenty of books when I’m going on a trip--ones I know I’ll like and ones I take in case I don’t like others and ones I take in case I’m not in the mood to read even the ones I know I’ll like. So when I left on our family vacation, I had a good supply. I didn’t need another book. But...

...we passed a bookstore and Jenny and Nate ran in because they wanted to buy me a book. It was “The Book Thief.” They said it was a YA, but that they thought I’d like it. Jenny, Nate’s mother, was listening to an audio version. Nate, who is 14, read it a couple of years ago and considers it one of his favorites. He is currently reading ”To Kill a Mockingbird” and that’s already another favorite. Because of who he is, I know he has a lifetime ahead of him of reading books he will love.

I started it as soon as we got back to the house. A little strange at the beginning. The narrator was Death. There were some graphic elements, which I am never charmed by. But once the story really got going, I couldn’t put it down. The book is over 500 pages and when I finished it the next afternoon I cried. A lot.

The author, Markus Zusak, includes a lot of visual imagery in his unusual use of language. And I liked that the book’s familiar subject, the Holocaust, was viewed from a much less familiar perspective: the main character is a young German girl living with her German foster parents among their neighbors in a small town not far from the concentration camp at Dachau. The girl is the “book thief” who has a passion for books even before she can read and collects them whenever and however she can. As you might expect in a book narrated by Death--or, I guess, any decent book--the people run the basic human gamut, monsters to heroes, with most occupying the flawed and complicated middle ground.

And what a fascinating character Death is as Zusak has imagined him. He’s not an enemy. He’s pretty much just following orders, too. He goes where he needs to be and even seems to have a heart that breaks occasionally at what he’s called on to do. The souls he must carry away he bears softly, often tenderly, even sadly. He is nothing to be afraid of. He is just the natural consequence of what happens.

A gift carefully chosen is always a treat. But when someone gives you a book they have read and loved, it carries an extra dimension. The giving of a treasure from one book-lover to another is a gift of time well-spent and ideas lovingly offered. What could be better?

Thank you, Jenny and Nate.

A tale of two endings

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:06:00 +0000

First of all, I had a “Wuthering Heights” problem just because I had never read it. No, really, never read it, I have to confess, though I had read and reread its cousin, "Jane Eyre," many times. My friend Susan and I had coincidentally just finished rereading “Middlemarch” and were thinking about reading something else together.

“’Wuthering Heights’,” I said. “I hate “’Wuthering Heights’,” she said. But, being the person she is, she agreed to go along with me. Now I know what she meant.

I had not gone far into the fresh hell that is Emily Bronte’s great work when I noticed that I hated, if not the book itself, then every character. Ok, not Lockwood. Lockwood’s not really a hate-able character.

So for the past week my bookmark has remained at a page just short of the end. I’m not sure why I am so reluctant to be done with it. That’s more like the way I sometimes am with books I love. Like the one I galloped through while avoiding Heathcliff, et. al.--“Persuasion,” Jane Austen’s final and posthumously-published novel.

It is a particular triumph, don’t you think, to have written a novel that is still a page-turner 193 years later. I recently saw an exhibit of Jane’s letters at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York and was charmed by how closely her snarky comments to her correspondents echoed the ever-so-gently snarky observations of her heroines. Reminded me of Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s comment, “If you have nothing nice to say, then come sit by me!”

I couldn’t put it down. Until I got close enough to the end so that I knew Anne would be reunited with her love (it’s not a spoiler if the book is almost 200 years old, is it?) and her silly sisters would grow a little wiser and all manner of things would be well. Though not so much for Mr. Elliot and Mrs. Clay, whom we despise, right?

But at that point I stopped for a while, trying to stave off the wrenching moment of parting from the wonderful world of Jane. I even considered going back to Heathcliff. But it felt impossible to veer from “Persuasion’s” privately guarded emotional turmoils to the heavy lifting of sturm und drang on the moors. So I finished it and loved every delicious sentence.

In the intro to the edition I read, Margaret Drabble calls “Persuasion” a “novel of second chances” and what’s not to love about that? Especially at this time of year, when we look forward to January’s illusion of a clean slate.

Now I know what’s waiting for me. A hot and cold dose of human flaws and passions. I’ll read it and I’ll be glad I did. I know, I know. I’ll finish “Wuthering Heights” tomorrow.

The occasional recipe: sugared nuts

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:20:00 +0000

As I write this my house smells like holiday cooking. The sugary kind of cooking rather than the potato-pancake-frying kind. I tried a recipe my friend Paula gave me. It’s for sugared nuts, which make good munchies to have on hand, as well as fun little gifts. I put some of mine into small bags and tied them with ribbons as gifts for my neighbors. And if that’s sounding kind of Martha Stewart-ish, keep in mind that the recipe adheres to my usual ratio of easiness to delish-ness.

Here’s what you need:

nuts--about 2 lbs. I used raw pecan and walnut halves
2 egg whites
1 c. white sugar
1/3 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp. 5-spice powder

Preheat the oven to 275. (I wish I could find the little “degree” circle on my computer. Someone reading this must know.) Whirl the egg whites in a food processor and add all the other ingredients except for the nuts.

Put the nuts in a large bowl and pour the egg white mixture over them. Toss to coat the nuts well. Spread the nuts in a single layer over 3 cookie sheets. They should have enough room so that they’re not clumped together too much. And I covered the cookie sheets with parchment just to make the clean-up easier. Bake 55 minutes. Then lift them from the cookie sheets with a spatula while warm to separate any that are stuck together. I think using parchment makes this step easier, too.

That’s the whole thing. They’re really good and, as you can see, really easy. I doubled the recipe and my second batch just came out of the oven. Only little problem is that now I’m alone in the house with them. Uh-oh.

New on the Bookshelf: "Americans in Space" by Mary E. Mitchell

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:21:00 +0000

Mary E. Mitchell is one of my unseen online friends. We’ve never met in person, although I’m hoping we will, since we are both in the Boston area. But what I know of Mary is her generosity and good humor in taking on the “herding cats” job of organizing a lovely retreat for women writers each spring in Duxbury, and her accomplishments as a writer of well-reviewed novels, including this latest one.

Mary’s new book is “Americans in Space.” Her style has been described as “one party poignancy, one part humor” and, in choosing “Americans in Space” as an Indie Next selection, the reviewer said, " ‘Americans in Space’ will speak to all readers, especially to parents of teens."

Mary’s first novel is “Starting Out Sideways,” a 2007 Thomas Dunne Book from St. Martin's Press. For years she has taught writing at the Joan Brack Adult Learning Center and at Bethany Hill School, a living and learning community, both in Framingham, Massachusetts.

In describing “Americans in Space,” Mary says:

“For months I have been telling readers that “Americans in Space” is about loss, and about the long, excruciating road back from loss for a young widow and her unmoored family. The novel’s main character, Kate Cavanaugh, struggles mightily two years after the death of her beloved husband. She cannot reach Charlotte, her angry teenage daughter, who acts out in cyberspace and in tattoo parlors. She cannot get Hunter, her four year old son, to speak in full sentences, or relinquish the ketchup bottle he carries clutched to his heart. She cannot find happiness, despite the best efforts of resourceful friends, an eager love interest or colleagues at work. Kate is a guidance counselor at the Alan B. Shepard (first American in space!) High School, and runs a weekly counseling group for mixed-up, troubled students. Her group is called New Frontiers. My misfits, Kate lovingly calls them.

“It is the one area of Kate’s life that seems to work, her weekly efforts with these deeply troubled children. Unlike with her own daughter, Kate feels she can bring comfort and meaning to these young people’s lives. They look up to her and trust her and try not to curse when they’re around her. She has a way of making them believe in themselves, even when they’re feeling most self-loathing or unsure. One girl in her group, Phoenix, especially captures Kate’s interest.

‘She looks nothing like my Charlotte,” Kate muses, “yet I often imagine Phoenix to be my daughter’s psychic twin. She is sensitive, intelligent, volatile. If my own daughter were blonde instead of dark, and named for a city instead of for Kyle’s grandmother, Charlotte might be this lovely waif in my office. Except that Charlotte didn’t swallow a whole bottle of ibuprofen last year.’

I think what I realize, only after writing this novel and then seeing it in print, is that Kate has been healing herself all along, through her work with other people’s children. It is the giving of herself to others that finally touches the iceberg within her heart. The warmth and forgiveness she feels for these children begins to allow her to forgive herself and love her children just the way they are. A truth, then, emerges from fiction.

It’s a funny thing to find a lesson in one’s own work. Maybe we are our own best teachers, if only we listen closely enough.”

Recipes for connections

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:32:00 +0000

It’s strange how things intersect. Here I was thinking about secrets around recipes, and then just yesterday I was given a very special cookbook. It’s called “Emily’s Table.” The recipes in it are from the kitchen of Emily Mehlman, a beautiful woman I had the privilege to know as a friend.

Emily was a homemaker in the finest and largest sense of the word--a community-maker, with her table as its center. She was one of those people--mysterious to me--who always “knows”--how to get cut flowers to open, how to store sweaters properly, where to shop for a new car, how to make Jordan Marsh’s blueberry muffins, how to get any kind of stain out of any kind of fabric. She was the wife of Bernard Mehlman, former senior rabbi and now senior scholar of Temple Israel in Boston. When the temple was active in helping bring people from the former Soviet Union to Boston, she instinctively understood what the newcomers would need to know and when. A few weeks after they had arrived, when they had caught their breaths from the first frenzy of moving in, she would arrive to make sure they knew things like how to adjust the thermostat in their apartments, how to take publc transportation to wherever they needed to go, how to find a doctor.

When Emily died in 2006, a group of her close friends decided to collect some of her favorite recipes into a book. It’s a book much like Emily herself--beautiful, thoughtful, filled with goodness. These are recipes for meals eaten with family and friends. They are not, by and large, recipes for special occasions as much as they are recipes for making a special occasion of every day. You can picture people gathered around doing what human beings have done throughout our existence--sharing sustenance, talking, making the necessity of food into something sacred.

Sharing recipes, like sharing food, is a generous and nurturing act. It is an act that defies mortality. It lets us, in a very immediate, concrete way, keep close something real about those we no longer have physically present in our lives. It’s a line drawn through generations and across borders. What more basic human act can carry us through time and space than the words on paper telling us, "This is good--try it."

Looking through “Emily’s Table,” I am tempted by one recipe after another. And as I remember this extraordinary woman I think, too, of the extraordinary women--her friends--who took on an enormous project in order to preserve their delicious memories of her. They created a worthy tribute. Anyone who knew Emily will treasure this book. And anyone who didn’t know her would be well advised to try the recipes.

I have a food spatter on one page already.

Secret recipes and the secret of recipes

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:51:00 +0000

Item number one: My old friend Jay came to visit a few days ago, brought the most delicious chocolate chip cookies, and sent me the recipe. It’s from Neiman Marcus, but it’s a real recipe for really wonderful cookies.

(If you’ve never heard the story--which is total urban myth--it involves a woman eating at the restaurant in Neiman Marcus, loving the chocolate chip cookies so much she asks for the recipe, only to be billed $250 or some such outrageous sum for it. Story is a complete fabrication.)

Item number two: In today’s New York Times Michelle Slatalla has a piece on neighbors trying to outdo each other with secret recipes for stuffed cabbage.

The confluence of those two items got me thinking about the whole idea of the secret recipe. Not a pretty picture. For two reasons.

Take one: Food is a basic need and also love made concrete. It’s nurturing, caring, the one indispensable thing we can offer someone else in true generosity. So the whole idea of withholding a recipe is so stunningly miserly when you think about it that it’s really not so far removed from bread lines and continents of starving children. The smallness of begrudging someone food--maybe especially delicious food--has implications of a world view that goes way beyond our little recipe files.

Take two: Just who is it who is usually seen as hoarding those secret recipes--or maybe giving out the recipe but with one vital ingredient missing? Women. Women whose place was so firmly rooted next to the stove that the secret recipe can be a stand-in for the miniscule power they had, the perceived value of what they had to offer in the world. Tiny scraps of yellowed paper. Tiny aspirations, truncated possibilities.

So, thank you to my friend Jay and to Neiman Marcus for the cookie recipe. Thank you, Marcie, for carrot pudding,; Caryl Kahn for peach pie; Fran for bread pudding and another Fran for Tuscan bread soup; my late neighbor Dan for country stew; my aunt Sara, gone for decades, whose noodle pudding recipe lives on and has now evolved to include one new ingredient suggested by my granddaughter. My recipe file is filled not only with foods, but with people, with their history, and with my ties to them. My thanks to you all: your generosity continues to sustain me.

December 1: World AIDS Day

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:17:00 +0000

Tomorrow is World AIDS Day. Again. The epidemic first identified in 1981 has now claimed over a half a million lives in this country, over 25 million worldwide.

Little was known about its cause or treatment in those first years. The one definitive thing that was established early--prevention--was silenced by the Reagan administration, which was more concerned about offending its supporters on the religious right than about doing right. By the time the word AIDS passed President Reagan’s lips in 1987, more than 36,000 Americans had been diagnosed and 20,000 had died.

Meanwhile, activist groups like New York’s Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP, and AIDS Action Committee in Boston were founded. Their mission was prevention--spreading the very explicit word on condoms--and service to those who were HIV-positive. I was a volunteer with GMHC and those days were unforgettable. Nothing went on there that was small; everyone was a hero. I remember the people I knew there with huge admiration.

Here in the Boston area there is an exhibit of part of that early political struggle around AIDS education, prevention, and care. “ACT UP New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis 1987-1993 is on view until December 23 at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street in Cambridge.

I will be spending time there on World AIDS Day there, honoring the astounding courage shown by so many and remembering that silence still equals death.

Thanks-giving

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:05:00 +0000

In between making the third kind of cranberry sauce and the carrot pudding for my family’s holiday dinner, I’m taking time out to write this. I’m sure everyone who writes a blog or a newspaper column or an e-mail to a friend is composing a similar message today, but that’s fine. It’s as it should be.

A few years ago on a trip to Key West, I was struck by the “sunset celebration” that goes on there every evening at the water’s edge. In the travel article I wrote on that trip I said, “If the sun set only once a year, so the folk wisdom goes, everyone would stop to watch. In Key West they watch it every day.” I think, too, of a Jewish teaching that, at the end of our days, we will be called to account for every fruit in its season that we did not taste.

Isn’t that what Thanksgiving is all about--noticing the things--small as a pear, huge as a sunset--that enrich every one of our days?

I wish you all a holiday warmed by the presence of loving family and friends. I hope you find yourself surrounded by what nurtures you. And I wish us all the good sense to notice.

The end of a week of poetry prompts

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:09:00 +0000

Today is the final prompt in my series honoring my teacher, Ricky (Ottone Riccio) and his new book of poetry assignments, “Unlocking the Poem.”

Ricky is known for his poem-provoking assignments and I hope you've tried some of these. In the time I studied with him there was always that moment at the end of the workshop when he would say, “For next week...” And what followed was often something that sounded impossible, involving both form and content, and eliciting groans around the table. But, invariably, we returned the next week energized by our efforts, eager to share our poems, and enriched by the challenge to step outside our comfort zones and try something new. And, strangely, if he gave us a few weeks off to just write whatever we chose, we’d often ask for an assignment.

For today, I’m feeling benevolent, so no villanelles based on complex text, no Shakespearean sonnets on Sumerian goddesses. Just a free verse poem of 25 lines or a prose poem of 100-120 words on the subject of “year’s end.”

Did you have some fun with these prompts? Let me know.

Thursday poetry prompt

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:35:00 +0000

I continue with my week of poetry prompts in honor of my teacher, Ricky (Ottone Riccio)’s new book, “Unlocking the Poem,” written with Ellen Beth Siegel.

Here’s the one for today: write a poem based on this quote by Albert Einstein, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”

Now, imagine the poem...

Another day, another poem

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:42:00 +0000

I’m blogging more frequently this week to let you know about a new book of poetry prompts, “Unlocking the Poem,” by my teacher, Ottone (Ricky) Riccio and Ellen Beth Siegel.

Today’s prompt comes from Ricky’s web site, where it is the assignment for the month of November: a rondeau about ocean waves crashing against the shore.

Here, from Ricky’s first book, “The Intimate Art of Writing Poetry,” is a little about the rondeau to get you started. “the rondeau evolved gradually from the older rondel and consists of 13 full lines of four beats each, arrange in three stanzas of five, three, and five lines. Only two rhyme sounds are permitted. At the end of the second and third stanzas there is a tail--a half line taken from the first half of the first line. It’s a non-rhyming tail and is frequently turned as a pun. Using R as the symbol for the tail, the rhyme pattern is aabba aabR aabbaR.”

It’s easier if you see an example, like this famous World War I-era poem by John McCrae
In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Now go try one of your own.

Today's poetry assignment

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:38:00 +0000

Yesterday I blogged about a new book of poetry prompts, “Unlocking the Poem,” by my teacher, Ottone Riccio--aka Ricky--and Ellen Beth Siegel. I offered a sample assignment. Today, as promised, another:

Write a poem, between 12 and 45 lines. It should be about you, but may not include any of the following: your name, birth date, place of birth, physical description, profession, schooling, family, partner.

Also as promised, here’s my poem from the wolves/skate prompt I talked about yesterday. And, yes, my mistake: it was wolves, not wolf. I had seen the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra play an outstanding concert of Peter and the Wolf on Saturday, so I think I was still in “wolf” mode. Though not wolf’s clothing.

So, are you writing a poem?

where the wild things are

the wolves are always waiting
staring into us with pale unblinking eyes

they watch us as we rush to hear Mozart
our red claws brushing past outstretched hands
we smile our crushed glass smiles
and hurry into cars
to restaurants with sparkling chandeliers

and the wolves with licking tongues
watch as we skate the knife edge
between day and night

The key to unlocking your poems

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:58:00 +0000

Poets, here is a brand new book you should know about. “Unlocking the Poem” is by my poetry teacher, Ottone Riccio (“Ricky”), and Ellen Beth Siegel, a student of his and former workshop classmate of mine.

Here’s my Ricky story: I was living in New York, about to move to Boston. I was finding myself drawn to writing poetry, but with no idea how to proceed. I could revise a piece of prose writing, but poetry was a different world, one that felt like a mystery. Where to start?

One day in a bookstore I was lucky enough to come across a book that answered many of my questions. It was “The Intimate Art of Writing Poetry” and it turned out that the author, yes, Ricky, taught at the Boston Center for Adult Education, just a few blocks from where I would be living. He became my teacher.

Ricky has always been known for encouraging students to make their poems as concrete and as tight as possible. One apocryphal story has him saying to the author of a three-page poem, “This would make an excellent haiku.”

But beyond the deep knowledge of poetry and the striking ability to grasp what the poet was trying to do, was always a great respect for the poet. He is most definitely not of the slash-and-burn-the poet’s-ego brand of teachers. He most frequently introduces his comments by saying, “This is your poem. But if it were mine, this is what I would do.”

One of his greatest gifts as a teacher has been the assignments. And that is what “Unlocking the Poem” is all about. The book is a collection of his assignments--provocative, sometimes startling, sometimes groan-inducing prompts all designed to get you writing in new ways. To get you to dig deeper, work harder, write better. (Blatant plug reality check: some of my poems are used as examples in the book.)

One of my first of Ricky's assignments was to write a poem using the words “wolf” and “skate.” It became, strangely, the first of several wolf poems for me and for other workshop members, too. Try it. Tomorrow I’ll post my wolf/skate poem, along with another of Ricky’s assignments for you to try.

All you need is....to understand

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:11:00 +0000

That wasn’t exactly what the Beatles said, but here's a question I've been thinking about: is it possible that understanding is larger than love?

There’s been a lot of news coverage this week around the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I heard a story about students at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Because it’s where Winston Churchill gave his 1946 speech in which he first used the term “Iron Curtain”the school has felt a special tie to the cold War. So, to mark this anniversary, a group of students decided to build a replica of the wall and then tear it down.

As one of the students cxplained, “I think it’s important that people my age and younger understand that the wall did exist.”

You heard a lot of that kind of thing this week, that attempt to make an experience live for those who weren’t there, and always with this underlying impulse to “make them understand.” At the heart is the feeling that if only you could have been there, you would truly understand. It’s the drive behind things as different as the Holocaust Museum and Sturbridge Village. It’s the difference between “you had to have been there” and “I felt as if I were there.”

And maybe that’s a big piece in the puzzle of can’t-we-all-just-get-along. If we understood we would, well, understand. We could find a common ground to stand together on.

Sorry, George, Paul, John and Ringo, but we really do need more than love. Love is wonderful, but it's a hit-or-miss sensation, passionate, visceral. Whether it’s there or not is a little out of our hands.

Understanding is cooler, cerebral. You can make a decision to understand. It’s open-hearted, but also deliberate. We can, if we try, make understanding happen. And so we build replica Berlin Walls and colonial New England towns and death-camp-bound boxcars. Just to give people the chance to experience what it might have felt like to be someone else, somewhere else. We can’t always love, but it’s possible that, if we tried, we could always understand.

The occasional recipe: carrot pudding

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:57:00 +0000

Thanksgiving is coming and it’s time to plan dinner. One of the things my family gives thanks for every year is carrot pudding on the table. Our Thanksgiving is basically every vegetable dish we can think of, a lot of stuffing, four types of cranberry sauce, and, oh yes, a little turkey. For years carrot pudding has been the hands-down favorite.

My daughter Meg Russell got the recipe from her friend Marcie Roche. Now, Marcie seems like a natural source of recipes. She and her husband, Serge, run Three Clock Inn, a wonderful restaurant in South Londonderry, Vermont. But this recipe is strictly from Marcie; as a child she lived in Savannah and had a nanny who made this. That version called for lard, but we’ve used butter.

Easy as pie. Even easier, actually:

1--Peel and slice a lot of carrots and cook them until tender. This is what the recipe says, and I think we translate “a lot” into about 2 pounds. The slicing just has to be enough so they’ll cook pretty quickly. They’re going into the food processor, so no perfect uniform slices are required.

2--Melt 1 stick of butter and mix with carrots. Add 1 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1 cup flour, 2 cups milk, and cinnamon and vanilla to taste. You’re probably not really going to taste it at this point, so just put in as much as you think you’ll like.

3--Put all ingredients in blender or food processor. You want it to have a little texture, not like something out of a baby food jar.

4--Put the mixture into a greased ovenproof dish and and bake at 350° for 1 1/2 hours.

Probably feeds 8-10 people, but the recipe handed down in our family says “feeds one hungry Marcie.” Basically as much as you have is going to be eaten. Trust me, you’ll be glad you made it.