“Friendship” by Paulo Otavio Diniz Rodrigues (https://flic.kr/p/7qBgkT)

Friendship keeps us going, gives us support, tells us who we are, and forms a basis for our life’s stories. This week’s contributors examine different ways that friends can impact our lives.

“4’33” by Glenn Kane relives a day of mischief, courtesy of a fellow high school band member.

Old friends reconnect in “Visitor” by Kevin J. Lenihan, as their memories give way to a darker present.

“Stoned English Majors” by Stuart Michaelson is a coming-of-age story where independence, and friendship, sometimes prove to be at odds.

“Burning Out” by Kevin J.B. O’Connor examines the way that memories may be discarded as friends drift apart. 

Title: Cooking with the Muse: A Sumptuous Gathering of Seasonal Recipes, Culinary Poetry, and Literary Fare

Authors: Myra Kornfeld and Stephen Massimilla

Publisher: Tupelo Press, April 1, 2016

Hardcover, 494 pages

ISBN, 1936797682 / ISBN, 9781936797684

Link to purchase: http://www.tupelopress.org/

Or

http://www.amazon.com/Cooking-Muse-Sumptuous-Gathering-Seasonal/dp/1936797682/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464723265&sr=1-1&keywords=cooking+with+the+muse

My copy of Cooking with the Muse arrived, cornucopic and gorgeous, after much anticipation. This hybrid treat – part literary and gastronomic history, part poetry anthology and commentary, part beautifully written cookbook – provides many sources of pleasure. The book itself is lovely to look at, comfortable to hold, and fun to read. Dip into it and you find yourself learning all sorts of interesting things about food and culture and poetry and inspired to run to your local market, buy a ton of healthy ingredients, and take on the kitchen with verve and excitement.

Stephen Massimilla and Myra Kornfeld, poet and chef, married to one another, have married their love of poetry and healthy food in a well-organized and inspiring way.

Cooking with the Muse announces itself as a visceral response to a virtual world and asks that the reader give care and attention to what the writers call “the poetry of food.” Beginning with a history of the intersection of food and writing, the book continues by first explaining how to select the best ingredients, teaching us some basic techniques, and then organizing its contents by season. For each season there is a collection of recipes with the inspired qualities of poems, concluding with suggestions for seasonal meals. And to each season are attached many poems and stories, commentaries and insights.

I open, randomly, to page 260. There I find “Goan Green Coconut Fish Curry.” The title of the recipe is itself a poem. I notice the alliteration in the title and the colors brought to mind. I trust the cadence of the words. Already I’m combining ingredients – my love of the sound of words and my love of good food. The recipe is preceded by a photograph — it is in resplendent color — and helpful instructions about exactly what ingredients to get and where to get them. I learn that the curry mentioned in the name is not the yellow powder that comes to mind but rather leaves that when “sizzled in hot oil . . . give off an irresistible citrus flavor.” I’m ready to run off to 26^th Street in Manhattan (where the Indian grocers can be found) and buy myself a bunch of leaves. Following the helpful advice is a clear recipe, with useful hints provided, anticipating the questions a cook might have in attempting to follow the instructions.

Following the recipe are notes by both the cook and the poet. In this instance, the poet has more to say than the cook. The reader learns what curry is and what it isn’t. The reader learns about Goan cuisine – “it almost always includes fish,” Massimilla tells us. And we learn about the relationship of Goan cuisine to Portuguese influence (“the most important ingredient in Goan cooking, the chile, was introduced by the Portuguese”). The next page contains a poem by Mrigaa Sethi, “All of Creation,” in which Indian cooking and love come together: “The secret of recipes is also the love made after dinners,” writes Sethi. Culinary and erotic joy permeate this book.

My random selection is apt because in their book Massimilla and Kornfeld have extended their search for good food and good poetry to the entire world. This book is multicultural and historical in its reach. The writers aim to capture culinary and literary traditions that expand our knowledge of time and place. So Mrigaa Sethi and Dorianne Laux, Basho and Rumi, Thomas Nashe and Roy Blount find homes for themselves in these pages. The range and erudition evident in this book instructs and delights.

The authors are advocates of healthy eating, but they are not caught in any doctrinaire culinary path. The reader can satisfy vegetarian needs, yes, but can also find meats and fish, grains and fats. Kornfeld and Massimilla oppose refined sugars but show us the glories of maple syrup and other natural sweeteners. Nothing in this book goes against pleasure.

Another pleasure in this cornucopia can be found in Stephen Massimilla’s own poems. Massimilla, in many cases following Neruda, writes about food in poems that employ a language as lush as the ingredients in the curry described above. This, from a poem called “Yellow From the Fire”:

                                    And in the Hagia Sophia, priceless in rays
                                       of the eggshell domes,
                                   a small plain bowl,
                                   most buttery of all the Sultan’s treasure,
                                   Byzantine perfection of its glaze;
                                   yellow from the fire, phoenix in the gyre,
                                   mixing bowl for ocher,
                                   pastry dough, chickee fluff, yolk.
                                   O life, luster, halo, joy:
                                   Be the Color-Meister of my soul.

                                                                        (69)

Here’s what to do. Go out and buy this book. Go to the best market you can find and buy up the ingredients suggested in some of these recipes. Get together with the people (or person) you love the most. Take turns in the kitchen while another person reads aloud to you from the book. Eat your fill and go to bed happy.

“It smells like a real book.”
There aren’t such things as real books any more. There are just e-books. You know. those. Uh. Internet books. Oh wait you don’t have a computer. You sent me this paper typewritten. Well I believe this is why we exchan excuse me, I meant to say, I believe this is why we exchange our business. Typewriters. We both love the type. We are both writers.

This flash fiction project was born from a meditative state. There was no planning involved. As an exercise, Natalie began creating ideas from her typewriter on note cards. The words served as a way to capture ideas that were flowing from her brain. The ideas were just meant for reference and inspiration. As they sat collecting dust, Gen rescued them and gave them visuals. Each card is made the day it is posted. The purpose of this exercise is to consistently post work to inspire the creators and their audience. The Flash Fiction Project can be found online: daily updates (http://flashfictionok.tumblr.com/) and the archive (http://genevieveokupniak.com/flashfiction/).

If you haven’t already read it, stop by and pick up a copy. Then tell your friends. I’d like to introduce as many people as possible to the book this weekend. I’m proud of this collection, but since I put it out the same year as giving birth to my unfailingly energetic son, I have had difficulty finding the time to promote it.

I guarantee that if you read it, you’ll find something that makes you smile, laugh, ponder and want to read it aloud to your human (and canine) companions. Among the topics I address: women’s self-esteem and the mythos of Marilyn Monroe; the conspiracy of giant roadside cows; and the secret aesthetic of dogs. Culled from over ten years of newspaper columns and online writings, The Art of Life examines the beauty and humor of our existence on this blue marble.

One last thing… if you do read the book, I’d appreciate you writing a quick review on Amazon, Goodreads and any other book review site. Consider it your way of paying me back for the free read!

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

How does one summarize an entire life of more than 60 years? When faced with this ominous task, too many self-published writers produce rambling, episodic narratives that fail to capture the true drama and beauty of their lives. Fortunately for author Mathias B. Freese, he is a gifted essayist who has been writing essays for decades. By collecting his favorite pieces, he gives readers insights into both his personal life (which is, sadly, full of tragedy) and his views on such topics as education, psychotherapy, blogging, and, of course, writing. The book, as a result, is one part personal memoir and one part intellectual analysis.

This combination elevates the book, but it also means it is a book best read slowly. Readers are likely to find themselves pausing to contemplate the message behind each essay. Freese is direct and opinionated, and he often takes an opinion counter to popular thinking. Take, for example, the essay “Teachers Have No Chance to Give Their Best,” where he begins by railing against students for their “puerile minds” and “vacuity.” But while these words are harsh, he lays the blame squarely on teachers. As a former teacher himself, he strongly suggests that schools need to do more to encourage creativity and self-reliance.

Just when it seems he has given up, labeling the educational system as “a great Arctic mammoth wandering aimlessly,” he offers up a glimmer of hope: “Take any five decent, well-intended, creative and committed teachers and administrators, people who care, people in passion, free men and women, and one could wreak a reformation in weeks.”

Such is the power of these essays: he sets up problems in stark language, but he also points to the possible positives that we, as a society, could reach for. Whether writing about the challenges of the current publishing scene or the historical record of the Holocaust, he shows readers both the ugliness and the beauty of each topic. He shares valuable insights from his time as a psychotherapist, and he waxes eloquent on some of his favorite movies and classic film actors.

The personal essays in the back of the book provide a look at his family’s trials and grief. From the tragic loss of both his first wife and his daughter, to coping with memories of a neglected childhood, he writes powerfully when he is at his most personal. In many ways, these essays might have been a better way to begin this collection, since it would have helped to provide a real sense of the writer, in a personal way, before the denser, academic pieces.

This is a book that will stay with the reader, that will occasionally pop up as an undercurrent to conversations. While it doesn’t quite reach the heights of his fiction masterpiece, The i Tetralogy, it is a thoughtful, compelling read.

View all my Goodreads reviews

Combining fiction with zoological information, in A Whale’s Tale, Daniel S. Janik explores the undersea world of the Pacific Humpback whale. The book is described on the back as a “Read-Aloud, Color-Me-Please Book.”  It follows a particular whale from his birth until he begins his own family.

The idea for this book is a noble one: to interest children in the natural world through a character with whom they can identify. The narrative, however, could pose problems for young readers, whether they’re reading it themselves or listening to an adult. Some of the vocabulary, for example, such as “inseparable” or “increasingly tolerant” might be above them. More problematic, though, is the structure. At the beginning of the tale, it is unclear who is speaking, but it turns out to be the whale who would eventually become the young humpback’s mate. It would have been better to tell the whole tale from the main character’s perspective.

Since the story is told from a whale’s point of view, it downplays scientific terminology and describes things from a sensory perspective. For example, it describes the phenomenon known as “bubble net feeding,” where whales combine forces to blow bubbles around small fish, which then confine the animals in a small area where they can easily be scooped up. However, for young people unfamiliar with this technique, an appendix or a sidebar describing the process in clear terms would have helped.

Ruth Janik contributed the illustrations, and her cover art is beautiful. It’s too bad the interior art could not also be produced in color. In addition to featuring the central characters, the book also includes other sea life, including an incongruous mermaid. Since these other fish and sea creatures are not mentioned in the story, a caption containing some information about them would have added to the learning experience.

While this story may interest children initially, there is little action aside from migration and feeding, so that might discourage repeated readings.  Still, any tale that  could help young readers appreciate the environment should be lauded, if for that spirit alone.

Rating: ** (2 out of 4 stars)

Savant Books and Publications, 2009; ISBN 1442105062

Disclosure: A review copy of the book was provided by the author.

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As he writes in the poem “The Calm Clam,” poet Changming Yuan yearns “to be a voice empowered / For all around me.” In his collection, Chansons of a Chinaman, he strives “To translate my loud pain / Into a muted pearl,” to reconcile his Chinese ancestry and his American life.

To do so, Yuan, whose work has appeared in Wild Violet, draws from history, mythology and natural imagery. In natural images he finds personal comfort and resonance, as demonstrated in the poem “Name Changing.” Here, he defends his choice not to Anglicize his name, which his parents created by “rearranging the sun and moon / vertically and horizontally” to give the name a balanced power. In the final stanza, he writes:

But to retain the subtle balances
In the wild wild world I wander
To hold my father’s sunbeam
With my mother’s moonlight
I fiercely refuse to change it.

In “Passengers” he turns racism on its ear, drawing power from his difference. He begins the poem with a litany of societal assumptions: “I speak aloud in tongue / I eat noisily with bamboo sticks / I appear everywhere like locusts” and then addresses directly those who might fear or even despise him for his “otherness”:

You can feel my Chinky shadow
Until we touch down
My breaths will invade
Your private space
My chanting will beat your eardrums
While you pursue your dream

Finally, he casts away such fears, saying, “I am not a phoenix / No more or less than a fellow traveler / With my own destination”. In the final lines, he calls for togetherness and understanding to replace fear and distrust: “So, feel free to do whatever comforts you / We will travel together”.

In the final section of the book, Yuan travels to China to seek out connections between his family history, his life today, and the legacy he will pass to his son. Once more, he finds inspiration and comfort in the natural world. In “Chinese Chimes: Nine Detours of the Yellow River,” he personifies the river as a toothless ancient one with “brownish wrinkles” whose “love for the Loess Plateau often overturns and overflows”. Although the river’s course is “crowded with holes and crevices”, Yuan finds hope within the river’s perpetual flow:

You may be tortured or burned to steam
But you will eventually find your impossible way
                                To the sea of blue sky

While occasionally prone to melodrama, for the most part, Yuan’s collection serves as a sort of guidebook: a translation between cultures, a nexus between past and present. In his best poems, Yuan’s work marries mythology and modernity with simple diction for a highly-accessible read.

Rating: *** (3 out of 4, Good)

Leaf Garden Press, 2009; ISBN: 978-0-557-08922-2

Disclosure: A preview copy of the book was provided by the publisher.

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Write what is hardest to say, my poetry instructor in grad school used to urge us, and Suzanne Richardson Harvey does precisely that. In A Tiara for the Twentieth Century: The Collected Poems of Suzanne Richardson Harvey, the poet tackles subjects ranging  from motherhood, family relationships and aging to bulimia, AIDS and homelessness.

Whether approaching a big issue (such as the aftermath of Chernobyl in “The Wheat Fields of Chernobyl”) or celebrating small marital moments (in “The Merits of Dining at Home”), her phenomenal word choice enables her to find the music in language. Take, for example, these lines from “Delivery Room”:

My body is a canvas stretched
To catch a falling wing walker
Pulsing like a tom-tom in some obscure and distant jungle

While a free verse poem, there is nonetheless an almost implicit meter: the insistent beat of these lines mimics the rhythmic stages of birth.

Harvey makes skillful use of poetic techniques, such as repetition, in “The Year of Gambler’s Anonymous”:

Love was 20
You could rest your heart in that
Love was a pair of 8’s
You could carve in two
Love was 11
You could mold that into magic.

Through this repetition, she captures the compulsion which drives the central character of the poem.

Such deft choices contribute to this collection’s success. Rather than taking easy outs of lapsing into abstracts, Harvey meets each subject head on, distilling it into essential moments and imagery. In each case, she finds the language to communicate truths in a powerful, specific and often tactile way.

In “Confronting AIDS,” she takes a personal approach to this devastating disease, acknowledging the impact it’s had on society and the investment many people have in finding a cure:

Those crippled cells you can’t claim alone
They’re lodged in the chambers of my heart
Where labels like syndrome and sarcoma
Are blank as a forgotten Christmas tag.

With this collection, Harvey, whose work has appeared in Wild Violet, has indeed crafted a tiara, a delicate coronet crafted from years of skillful, intuitive use of language.

Rating: **** (4 out of 4, Must Read)

Fithian Press, 2009; ISBN: 978-1-56474-489-0

Disclosure: A review copy of the book was provided by the publisher.

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If you like humor, real-life stories or just plain good writing, you will enjoy Idol Musings: Selected Writings from an Online Writing Competition edited by Sophie N. Childs. Idol Musings includes some of the best entries from LJ Idol, an annual online contest for Live Journal modeled after American Idol. Entrants come from a variety of backgrounds and experience. Some are established writers and some have never been previously published. What they do share is a love of blogging.

Childs has included entries on a variety of topics; there is something for everybody. While there some humorous pieces included, the book’s strength lies in the intensely personal pieces.

Some pieces, such as “Once Upon a Baby Doll” by Darcy Bridges, deal with the writer’s financial struggles. That is something more and more people can relate to.

Pieces also deal with other common themes such as love and loss and family. There several pieces on the theme of  “cracking up.” Although we may not have had experiences exactly the same as the writers, many of us can relate to the feeling of being overwhelmed with our lives. Other entries deal with experiences that may be unfamiliar and may even be uncomfortable for some people to discuss.

“How I Learned to Love the Bomb or Why I Stopped Being Angry and Started Living Life” by a writer known only as SG, describes her experiences as a lesbian dealing with other people’s homophobia. She starts her piece saying: “Ninjas are much cooler than pirates.” She explains that she has gotten tired of being angry at people who hate her because of her sexual orientation and has decided on a more subtle approach to dealing with them. “All I can do is live my life, the best way I know how and hope that maybe, just maybe, they’ll come to see me (and my wife) as more or less just like them, except we happen-to-be-gay.”

In “To the Ghost I’ve Never Met,” the anonymous writer addresses her ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend that gave him herpes. The narrator talks about what it is to be a “one in six” statistic. The entry is a surprisingly compassionate treatment of a subject that can be uncomfortable for people to discuss.

Entries like these are so blunt in their openness, they may be shocking. But they also touch your heart. It’s worth reading Idol Musings to gain new insight into a new form of writing that is still emerging the blog. You will also gain insight into the online community at Live Journal. Like any community, there may not be disagreements, but it’s obvious there is a bond this online community where they can share their personal experiences.  Most importantly, by reading Idol Musings, you will gain insight into the human experience.

Rating: **** (Must Read)

Fey Publishing, 2009; ISBN: 978-0-473-15100-3.

Disclosure: A review copy of the book was provided by the publisher.

Wild Transitions Contents