Foodies Unite & Write

We are very close to the end of the year and what follows is that post holiday slump when the bills come due and the excitement goes down the drain. Think about this: I hope to teach a continuing ed course at the Westminster (Colorado) campus of Front Range Community College. It starts mid-January: "The Literature of Food." We will meet Friday mornings for ten weeks, talk about food lit, do some reading and writing, enjoy the company of like-minded folks. Register on line for WRIT1006-001. There is no text; I'll hand out materials as we go.

As I went to check on the listing, I could not find it, but I have been assured that it will appear when the catalog for Spring 2012 is finished. If online registration fails you, call (303) 404-5000 and ask to be connected to the continuing ed department. And if this fails, email me: kvdbooks@gmail.com.

Cleaning Up My Own Mess

Writing is a messy business. Ideas breed like wild rabbits, papers overflow the in-basket, the out-basket and the recycle basket. Ink cartridges drain like desert aquifers. Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh, my. And whose fault is this? Mine, of course. Not only is the mess of my making, but I cannot hire a house cleaner to tidy up after me. So, here's my writer's to-do list. Feel free to nag me if I don't report back that I've done these things before Santa comes. (Otherwise, I won't get that new Mercedes. Yeah, like I would anyway. I'll be driving my used Camry with a dented door until I die.)

• Finish the current book production project; all I need to do is reformat a couple of the poems and get the author to open her account on Create Space
• Find another book production/coaching client
• Update my submissions records on Duotrope and in my notebook
• Send out submissions of the new and the rejected poems
• File the food lit bibliography cards I've been tossing on top of the index card file
• Finish the cover design for my own next poetry chapbook; the text is done
• Select poems to read at Third Thursday at Forza open mike tomorrow
• Read and comment on the poems I've received for tonight's critique group
• Read the poetry book selected for our next poetry book club meeting at Boulder Books
• Figure out how to write reviews for Amazon
• Begin the script for the poetry theater which begins to roll out in February for presentation in April and get it to the director
• Update my website news page

Oh, looking at all of this, I think I need a nap. Or a walk with the dog. Maybe I need to make breakfast. Yeah, that's it. Must be low blood sugar that keeps me from tackling all this work. You listening, Santa? Oatmeal, now.

Catching Up with Robert Pirsig

I keep a small notebook full of titles that I intend to read. My list is a mishmash of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. One title that is not in that blue notebook is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. The book is older than my grown son, but somehow in the crush of living I have missed it again and again. Until my friend Synchronicity recently stood it facing out on a display in my local library. Well, my book bag was heavy but not full, so I casually added it to the week's collection. And I read it. No, that's not true. I read most of it, no, I read much of it. I skipped a lot of the philosophy. Sorry, Pirsig, but for me the relationship between the author and his young son is more compelling.

If you have not read this much loved book, do so. Check the Wiki listing for Pirsig to get a summary of his background if you're not sure about the content. The book is far too complex for me to summarize effectively, because it's not just about motorcycles, nor is it just about philosophy. In the course of a road trip from Minneapolis to San Francisco, Pirsig explains his life and his philosophy of Quality and the Good. I preferred reading his history of having been mistreated by a too extensive use of ECT, now regarded as a safe and effective treatment for mood disorders and some psychotic disorders. Having had his memory purposefully erased, Pirsig has to deal with the ghost of his former self and the fear that his son, Chris, will also suffer from mental illness. Their journey is not an easy one, but by the end they seem reconciled. In the postscript we learn that Chris was killed during a mugging just before his 23rd birthday. That's not fair. But it's true. Yeah, that sentence is a spoiler, but the book is not about sudden epiphany. It's about the inner life of a brilliant mind almost lost to illness and unwise treatment, about a father/son relationship that reveals more than we might know about our own family dynamics.

Seasonal Affective Writer's Doldrums

The Doldrums are, according to American Heritage, a region near the equator characterized by calms, light winds, and squalls. Even though I'm sitting in my red desk chair, I'm there at some border like the equator. Sails flapping, rudderless, my internal weather lacks the gusto to carry me forward. A winter slough. Not depression, not grief, not existential angst, just feeling dull. What to do? What to do?

Do what I've long and often advocated for any writer in this leeward port dragging her anchor: keep the pen moving, even when what dribbles out is drivel. So for the past few days I have done my own version of free writing. I keep writing till I have three pages added to my journal, three lousy pages, a la Ann Lamott's shitty first drafts, although these don't even deserve the label draft, unless it's the cold air that leaks into old houses. It's lonesome at sea without my images and ideas. But if I keep at it, some mental gear will re-engage and my little boat of words will chug along and arrive at a beach party on the page. See, it's beginning to move already.

Adjectival Flu

You might remember your middle school language arts teacher encouraging the use of adjectives to "paint a picture" of whatever thing you were describing--furious Uncle Charles, beautiful Aunt Lily, the hungry turtle in the scummy pond. Well, scummy isn't bad, but the reader was forced to take your word for Charles's fury or Lily's beauty. The reality was short changed by the shorthand description, by a lazy adjective. Better far to share Charles's red face, the fists, the shouted expletives--spelled out in dingbats if necessary. Let Lily be lovely by her smooth skin, her cupid's bow mouth, her shining hair and wasp waist. There are adjectives, and then there are adjectives.

So often I see in first drafts that a writer is leaning on large, imprecise adjectives like pillows to avoid crafting language that reveals rather than conceals the textures, characters, and actions s/he is trying to coax to life on the page. This avoidance annoys me especially in poetry, where concision and high energy are, for me, absolute values. That the sky is blue, rather than gray, is useful, but what good in a poem is a word like inevitable or intense? And, no, I'm not prejudiced against words beginning with in. My bias is for precision and too often adjectives are flacid and general. Even blue--what blue, the blue that hurts the eyes at noon, blue edging toward dusk, blue between the clouds? If we must have them, let the adjectives go through a security check at the gate: are they really as precise as a three ounce tube of toothpaste? If not, please deposit them in the bin provided.

PS: I have posted that reading list for culinary fiction I promised a few days ago. Hit the "Free Downloads" page above.

Food Writing Luncheon

We went to hear from a panel of professional food writers. We went to meet and eat. We went to share what we know about the world of food writing. And guess what? Even the experts had never met anyone who writes poems about food. Nor had they heard of my favorite food fiction. I had something to offer! I even called myself a food poet, a little stretch, but with a poetry book titled The Great Hunger, I felt justified. And immediately someone said, "I didn't know there was such a genre." So now I'm a genre unto myself. Try putting that on a resume or CV.

Actually, I don't own the genre. There's Diane Wakoski's The Butcher's Apron and Carolyn Jennings' Hunger Speaks, and a periodical called Alimentum which is full of food poems. As for culinary fiction, I think that even Janet Evanovich could be stirred into this mix, given the amount of food consumed in each of the Stephanie Plum novels. Diane Mott Davidson is Colorado's own best selling food novelist. I could go on and on, but instead in a couple of days I'll post a list of foodie fiction and poetry for you to download.

Meanwhile, how do we get into these sorting and labeling situations? Shorthand, I suppose. It's easier to identify someone by her genre than to get to know her. Then someone else asked me to tell her in thirty words or less what I do. ("Let me count the ways.") Apparently, the correct thirty words came out of my mouth between bites of grilled chicken Caesar salad because she smiled and nodded. Now she can tell her friends that she sat next to a food poet whose interest is in our relationships with food. I've been pared down to a sidebar.

Drat! Curses! Coffee, stat!

Remember last post I promised a new page? Well, it would be easy to add a new page, but it wouldn't be a page to which I can post! So the food lit posts will be incorporated here on the main page of the blog. Let's drown our disappointment in a good cup of coffee, as in reading about a good cup of coffee. As in the Coffee House Mysteries by Cleo Coyle. She's up to ten books, all based on the queen of barristas, Clare Cosi, who manages The Blend, a high-end coffee house in Greenwich Village. All the requisite murder mystery characters are present: Clare, the amateur but highly effective sleuth, her handsome and undependable ex-husband, Matteo; their young adult daughter, Joy, and Mike Quinn, police detective and love interest for Clare. Oh, yes, and the doyen, Madame, Matteo's mother and owner of The Blend. You can visit and be wowed by the fast moving trailer built into the web site, or you can savor the aroma of murder and mocha at your own pace by curling up in that ubiquitous easy chair with a book and a cuppa.

In addition to providing well-paced action and consistently good characterization, these books have educated my about coffee. Isn't that one of the perks about a good novel? We learn something while we are being entertained. For instance, I may be the only person in our caffeinated world who was pleased and surprised to know that dark roasts have less caffeine than regular. Good for me, since I favor the dark roasts, that a bit of cream dropped into really fresh coffee will bloom, whereas the same bit of cream in stale coffee will sink under the oils that have floated to the top. That real espresso is made slowly, otherwise, you just have brewed coffee. I now know the difference between a latte and a macchiato--silly me for not having known before now that one is "marked" with the cream. The other one contains more milk.

This coffee science has to result from real knowledge on Coyle's part. I asked the barrista at my favorite coffee shop today about the importance of the crema--that light tan froth that floats on the surface of a well-pulled espresso. He nodded, like, duh! I could not write Coyle's stories convincingly because I don't know spit about running an espresso machine. So, Coyle ("she" is two people, a husband/wife team of writers) not only writes about what she obviously knows, but she knows what she's writing about. Good idea.