Allons-y.

It poured out bubbly. Maybe I held the decanter wrong. Anyway, it’s dark ruby in color and about 90% opaque.

The first thing I thought of when I smelled this was clear. Then I thought of a mountain stream with a bank of flowers. The nose is very gentle. It doesn’t smell big like a typical cab. I also pick up a hint of cantaloupe. But really it has almost no nose. Maybe it needs more time decanting. It’s been just over an hour, so you wouldn’t think it would, especially for an American wine. Or maybe it needs to age more. It’s probably the latter.

It’s thick and caramel-y in texture. I taste plums and cherries on the palate.

It finishes spicy and with dry, dark berries. On the long finish, there’s some smoke and nuts and wood, like cedar I guess. I’m not good with the wood, but I pictured cedar. Actually, I pictured the smooth top of a cedar desk. Something like:

Right now, this wine isn’t worth the $20 I paid for it, but I think it will be in a few years. I’d say pick up a bottle or two and store them for a few years. It’s just not ready, especially when there are so many good cabs at a less expensive price. Right now I give this like 88 points.

WAIT! Redux.

It’s been like an hour-and-a-half, and it’s finally opening. The nose has a body now and scents. There are still flowers, and my girlfriend says gardenias. I also get yellow plums and hint of chocolate.

The texture is more chalky now. The finish is less spicy, but nutty. On the palate there are purple plums and William Carlos Williams wife reading:

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Poor Florence Williams

Still this wine needs some time aging. I’m still giving it 88 points.//

First, here’s what the back of the bottle says:

BORN IN FRANCE … RAISED IN AMERICA. Not all wines are created equal. 337 is the most coveted Cabernet Sauvignon vine stock in Bordeaux, France. These rare vines are prized for their concentrated flavor and thrive in the red soils and cobblestones of our Lodi vineyard. The resulting wine exudes seductive aromas of mocha and dark cherry followed by intense flavors of ripe blackberry and spice. Enjoy with savory pasta, pot roast, thick steaks, and creamy cheeses.

The color is a dark purple that’s about 90% opaque.

The nose is fruity, dry, and spicy. There is also some chocolate and cherries and a woody coffee, like Costa Rican Tarrazu, and like a Costa Rican Tarrazu, there’s a hint of creaminess.

The taste has some black cherries and chocolate. I also pick up a bell pepper.

The finish is a bit tart but juicy with a spicy fruit. Maybe it’s a chocolate covered strawberry with whisp of pepper and cinnamon. The juicy finish makes my front, top gums drool with pleasure.

This would go good with chicken in some sort of red sauce. I keep picturing chicken picante whenever I sip it.

This is not your typical Cabernet Sauvignon, but it’s sure delicious. And for $10 – wow.

90 points, though it’s probably technically 89, but wuteffer.

To download the Noble Vines tasting notes, click 337 Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 Tasting Notes.//

First there is:

Doctor Who and the Green Magots from The Green Death

The third Doctor is one my favorites. The tenth is obviously the best, and the fourth is pretty good, too. But here we have the third doctor with his sonic screwdriver levitating a bottle of Raymond Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Selection 2008 as it is being attacked by green maggots. The third doctor also stands on some coasters my friend made. Actually, the bottle isn’t levitating, it’s suspended in the air by a magical wine rack my brother gave me. It’s pretty awesome. It continually astounds me.

Then there are these:

Decanter and Tour Glasses

A decanter! I’ve been meaning to get one of these for so long. Luckily, another friend got me one. And yes, decanter’s do make a difference, as I’ve discovered. The two glasses are called tour glasses, at least at Crate and Barrel. They are modeled after Schott Zwiesel’s angled glasses, which are $62 to $72 at Amazon depending on the day. In the decanter above is a whole bottle of Raymond Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Selection 2008.

To the tasting.

But first a little background. Here’s another Cabernet Sauvignon that’s not all cab. According to the Raymond Vineyards website, this one is 89% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8% Merlot, and 3% Cabernet Franc, and it’s 14.5% alcohol. The list price is $35, but I picked it for $19.99 at Mahan’s. The people at Mahan’s said if I liked the Sebastini 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon that I’d love this, and I love the Sebastini, especially its jammy finish. Mmm.

Ok. To the wine. It’s not very opaque for a cab. It’s like 75% opaque. I can see through it.

The nose is big and musty with mushrooms, black currants, raspberries, anise, one bing cherry, and few grains of cinnamon. There’s a lot going on here. I hope it tastes a bit more simple.

There are big fruits, but they aren’t juicy. They are dry. There’s a hint of cherry, too.

The finish is spicy with white pepper plus the cinnamon. What a fun finish. It’s not jammy like the Sebastini, but it’s fun. I keep sipping it just for the finish. The long finish.

It so smooth and velvety, too. It’s damned delicious. 91 points.//

Sir Mark Rice – Muhammad Ali

Trio Madjesi – 8ieme Round

Jorge Ben – Cassius Marcellus Clay

The People’s Choice – Best Ever & Muhammad Ali

Eddie Curtis – The Louisville Lip

Dennis Alcapone – Cassius Clay & Joe Frazier (Round 2)

Dermot Kelly – Muhammad Ali – The Ballad

The Alcoves – The Ballad of Muhammad Ali

Orchestra G.O. Malembo – Foreman Ali Welcome To Kinshasa

Big Youth – Foreman vs. Frazier

Don Convay – Rumble in the Jungle

Tom Russell – Rumble in the Jungle

Rope-a-Dope

The Quotes

David Jordan – “My Destiny” – A Tribute

Much of this can be found on Hits & Misses.//

Zone 3 Press is a sneaky, awesome press. How many poets really know of this press? Zone 3 Press seems like it is flying under the radar. I mean, they only put out one or two titles each year, but, damn, each book is terrific. Copper Canyon, BOA, Graywolf, watch out. There’s another press delivering excellence, and Amanda Auchter‘s The Glass Crib is no exception.

So why the title The Glass Crib? Is it because it’s an intriguing image? Yes. Is it because it appears in the poems “The Threat” and “Offer It Up”? Yes. But it also occurs as an associative symbol. To me a glass crib sounds dangerous since it could shatter (and there are shattering glass images in the book). I mean, who would put their child in a glass crib? Though a glass crib also has a pristine feel about it, too. With the glass crib, you also get the feeling of a safe place for a baby – a crib – which is juxtaposed with the danger of glass and the sterility of being behind glass. When I first thumbed through these pages, I thought the book was going to be about being an adopted child, which it is in part. As an adopted child, I could relate to those glass-crib feelings, but can’t we all? Aren’t those the feelings an adopted child would have? The feeling of being in a safe place but among strangers. And when with strangers, don’t you feel a bit scrutinized and when in glass, perhaps, the child feels like a lab rat. This leads to the second side of the symbol – a glass crib is like a fish tank or a place to put hamsters or lab rats, but it’s not a place for a baby. An animal, yes. A baby, no. The glass crib image and the associations I just shared are the feelings and tones Auchter’s collection of poems present. That is, Auchter presents us with the delicacy and hopefulness that are present with pregnancy, birth, babies, and young children, and the terror and tragedy that can accompany the birth and or death of a young child. This book is about sorrow, pain, loss, and ascension.

The Glass Crib begins with the tender poem “Annunciation,” which is about the hope that accompanies pregnancy:

                                               My skin

   stretched and torn into the shape
   of a child's arm or a foot, and then

   a mouth, an eye. His incredible blue
   breath.

The following five poems, however, present a  harsh tone that is aimed at the vodka-drinking birthmother who accidentally conceived the author. The shift begins slowly in the opening lines of second poem, “Possible Beginning”:

   My birthmother unties the strings of her bikini top

   on a striped beach towel, lights her cigarette,
   flicks her ashes into the muddy Gulf.

                                  When she wakes
   the next morning, brown skinned, hungover

   in bed with a man who brings her aspirin,
   tomato juice, his fingers to her lips,

   I am still the sand grain stuck inside her
   from the day before

This is how we are introduced to the birthmother. At first, the scene seems benign and innocent – a young lady is sunbathing and smoking cigarettes. Then it slowly turns. The birthmother has brown skin, which means she’s in the sun a lot, and she’s hungover, which means she drank a lot. Ok. That’s fine I suppose. But the more the detail the poem reveals the less benign this birthmother becomes, and then we learn that she is pregnant in the wonderful image “I am still the sand grain stuck insider her leg / from the day before.” This pregnancy is reinforced later with:

   the possible beginning of fingernails

   nostrils, knees. Of her name
   called over and over, his breath,

   her body on fire, the idea

   of face and knuckle, the small mouth
   she will push away.

The harshness and anger towards the birthmother grows, and then in “Gospel of the Unplanned Child,” we read a dialogue between the mother and the unborn child:

   You said I want my body back.
   I said your body is my body.
   You said I'll kill you with the stairs.
   You said I'll kill you I'll kill you.
   I said I'm still here.
   You said please don't tell –
   I told with my soccer kick.
   I told with my umbilical cord.

A few poems later in “Elegy with Photograph in Hand,” it seems the author will forgive the birthmother:

                                     inside

   my mouth runs the hemline of your teeth
   the thread of your pink tongue rising from
   my throat, or that whenever I catch myself

   singing, I owe all the notes to you.

This forgiveness, however, is short lived, if it is forgiveness at all as the tone of the final lines may not be in line with the actual sentiment. The harsh feelings and anger towards her birthmother continue in the following poems. Until we learn, that the author is unable to bear children.

The first part of section “I. Possible Beginning” is to set up an anger at the irresponsibility of her birthmother and the accidental pregnancy, the vodka drinking during the pregnancy, and the attempt to kill the fetus. Then we get the irony of the author not being able to have a baby, and she would probably be a very caring mother, too, given all of her past experiences. All the author has been through creates a pain from absence, as expressed in “Tether”:

         How much we give up for this
unnameable thing: love without

face, without name. Love, a nest filled with bone, umbilicus,
             fingernails. Affliction.

The next section, “II. Without,” jumps from the careless mother and the baby that can never be conceived to the loss of siblings. In the second section we get some horrific images of car accidents and loss and death of siblings, such as this scene from “False Memory Syndrome”:

         Some days,

           there was an empty road, gravel, often

   rain. She forgets
        if the car was moving toward her
   or away, headlights or taillights, her face

       thrown through the wind-

                     shield, her body

       in the damp country field.

That’s a terrific line break in the middle with “wind- / shield.” Usually, I’m against line breaks on word breaks. They tend to be weak and not well thought out or more of a distraction than an enhancement. But here, I feel and get it. The lady is thrown through the wind as she flies out of her car to the “damp country field.” It’s like a movie accident. And then the line break to “shield”. Wham. When you read “shield,” you can see and feel and hear her slamming into the windshield. The impact is real. The causality, however, is a off. She should crash into the windshield, then fly through the air to the “damp country field.” But this experience worked for me on the first readings. I wasn’t distracted. I was into it. (By the way, here is an instance of shattering glass – the glass crib breaking. This accident will also be revisited later in the book.)

There’s also the poem “Pyx,” which seems like the burial of an unborn child. Well, it did until I looked up “Pyx.” A pyx is is a small round container used in the Catholic churches to carry the consecrated host, or Eucharist, to the sick or invalid or to those who are unable to come to a church in order to receive Holy Communion. Even after you know what a pyx is, the scene is touching. And that’s what I like about these poems – they are emotionally involved. It’s hard to write directly about an experience and be emotional without being cheesy, overly sentimental, deliberately pulling the emotional cords, or just being down right clichéd, deliberate, and over the top. But Auchter succeeds. I envy that. I want to take classes with her to learn how to get genuine emotions into a poem instead of intellectualized emotions.

Saint Augustine by Philippe de Champaigne

And it’s around here, where the running start begins to gain momentum from the leap from section “II. Without” to the section “III. Bring Splendor.” The leap from section II, which I see as an extension of section “I. Possible Beginning,” to section III is the leap from pain to the belief or acceptance in God. It’s as if the first two sections were a test by God. The leap is like The Confessions of St. Augustine. The leap, however, requires knowledge of some saints. But before I get to those saints, let’s getting back to the running momentum, which also occurs in the beginning of section III.

I’m thinking specifically of the poem “Offer It Up,” which feels like it was the first poem written in the collection. The main moments in first two sections of The Glass Crib recur here. In fact, after reading “Offer It Up,” I feel like the first two sections were written in order to fill in all the spaces in this poem. While I like this poem, especially where it is placed, it doesn’t seem like it can stand on its own. It’s seems elliptical without the other poems. This may be why it is one of the few poems in the collection that wasn’t previously published in a journal. But here, in section III, it sings and it acts as a catapult into the following poems. The poem ends:

      For my sister who almost died,
   my brother that did. That each time I felt

   the loss of a letter or a person, I could
   strike
              my knees to the floor

   and give it all back to the God
       who asked me to bear it.

After these lines, the poems move to the saints that I mentioned above, some of whom are incorruptible saints. In fact, without a knowledge of these saints, you might get confused to why there are the poems for these saints. I know I did, but I also knew based on the strong poems the preceded that there was a reason from the switch from the personal to the saints, from the secular to the religious. So why the leap? Is it because the previous sections were a test from God? Yes, in part. But really it’s about who the saints are and what they did. Once you know, you’ll see the similarities between them and the experiences of the first two sections. Many of these saints had difficult childhoods and witnessed the death of siblings and/or had poor relationships with their parents. I won’t point out all the parallels due to page limitations (which cost money to print [donations please]), but I’ll point out the main ones for each saint.

Saint Agatha

St. Agatha gave her life to God and would not have sex with any man, including the powerful Quintan, who then arrested her and put her in a whore house and then a jail. Her final prayer was:

Lord, my Creator, you have always protected me from the cradle. You have taken me from the love of the world and given me patience to suffer. Receive my soul.

Now if that doesn’t sum up the author’s experiences, I don’t know what does. St. Agatha’s breasts were also cutoff.

Saint Cecilia

St. Cecilia is the first incorruptible saint. She refused sex with her husband on her wedding night because she was devoted to an angel who would appear if she were baptized. When she was finally baptized, the angel appeared with flaming wings and holding two crowns of roses and lilies. After the husband witnessed this, he was converted to Christianity. When the Romans tried to change her ways, they tried by drowning her in her bath, but this failed and so did the beheading. This parallels the baptism scene in “Limbo for the Miscarry” and, more importantly, the experiences in “Gospel of the Drowned Twin.”

Saint Catherine of Alexandria

The Catherine Wheel, which is the title of one of the poems in section “III. Bring Splendor,” is named after St. Catherine of Alexandria. The Catherine Wheel was a middle-age torture device that tore apart the legs and arms and then was lifted for vultures, crows, and whatever else to eat the living body. The death, obviously, was very painful and slow, and it was quite popular entertainment. Catherine was killed on one of these wheels in the 4^th century by the Roman Emperor Maxentius. This saint seems to parallel the experience in “Pyx” as well as her brother’s death or her sister surviving a car accident and more specifically in “Gospel of the Organ Donor” and to some extent in “The Thundering” and the final poems of section “II. Without.”

Saint Catherine of Sienna

Giacomo di Benincasa and a forty-year-old Lapa (who already had 22 children) gave birth to twins during the Black Death era. One daughter was St. Catherine of Siena and the other was Giovana. The latter, raised by a wet nurse, died, but Catherine, who was raised by her mother, Lapa, lived a more healthy life. At age five or six, she had a vision of a smiling Jesus Christ who blessed her. A year later she vowed herself to chastity, and when her parents forced her to marry she refused and fasted, and during times of trouble she would build a cell within her mind from which she could never flee. She lived her life trying to reject her family. Later Jesus told her to live a more public life in the world. This has parallels with the 42-year-old mother in “Poem for the Adoptive Mother” and the sister in “Without” and other poems.

Saint Bernadette

St. Bernadette is also an incorruptible saint. Of her parents five children, she was the only one to survive infancy. Bernadette had visions of the Virgin Mary and repeated her words, including when Mary told Bernadette that she would not find happiness in this world but would find it in the next world. I see parallels to a number of places with this saint but especially in these lines from “Visiting Hour”:

                                this is how 

                       dying is, my breath 

        slipping under
   everywhere at once – see the balloon 

   you brought, how it lifts and sags,
   this is what I've become 

              on the other side.

Saint Theresa

St. Theresa is another incorruptible saint. She ran away from home at age seven with her brother in order to find martyrdom. She too had visions of Christ and angels. In one vision, an angel drove the fiery point of lance through her, or as she said:

I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron’s point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it.

The story of St. Theresa has close parallels to “The Half-Brother” and especially with the final five lines of “Poem for the Adoptive Mother”:

   How when you said to me years later, "I knew
   when I saw you," I want to think of myself

   reaching for your bright mouth,
   your turquoise necklace,

   everything I could get my hands on.

Where I said “catapult” before in reference to “Offer It Up,” I should have said centripetal force as the poems have gone full circle from “Annunciation” to the secular world back to the religious world and launched off:

   To which the air fills
   with living, with sugar,

   with reviviscence. Go forth beauty, birds

   of blossoms, sweetness. Made of sky,
   bring stingers, the form of tongues

   of fire, bring dawn over stones, over
   the awakened heart. Bring splendor,

   the last rising breath. Every question
   of death, a desire:

   go forth a field, a dizzying cloud.

I know I mentioned there are some religious poems in here, but don’t run in fear. They are done well, and they aren’t specifically religious but have religious content. What I said of emotion above can be said of religion in these poems too. In the poems in Amanda Auchter‘s The Glass Crib, your mind will be moved as well as your heart, soul, and spirit, and what else could you want from poems?//

That’s right I’ll be reading with Rob Carney. One of the three people to whom I dedicated Poems for an Church. So if you like my poetry, you’ll love his poetry even more. Plus, he’s an awesome reader. And if love mythic poems, this is a reading that shouldn’t be missed.

Rob Carney is the author of number of books, including Story Problems (Somondoco Press, 2011),  Weather Report (Somondoco P, 2006) and Boasts, Toasts, and Ghosts (Pinyon Press, 2003), winner of the Pinyon Press National Poetry Book Award — and two chapbooks, New Fables, Old Songs (Dream Horse Press, 2003) and This Is One Sexy Planet (Frank Cat Press, 2005). His work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Quarterly West, and dozens of other journals, as well as Flash Fiction Forward (W. W. Norton, 2006). He lives in Salt Lake City. To hear an interview with him, the Poet Laureate of Utah, Katharine Coles, and the editor at Sugar House Review, John Kippen, click here. He is also a former guest editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics.

Tom Holmes is the editor of Redactions: Poetry & Poetics (www.redactions.com). He is also author of: Poems for an Empty Church (Palettes & Quills Press, 2011), which was nominated for The Pulitzer Prize; The Oldest Stone in the World (Amsterdam Press, 1-1-11, 12:00:00 a.m (the first book released in 2011)); Henri, Sophie, & the Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound: Poems Blasted from the Vortex (BlazeVOX Books, 2009); Pre-Dew Poems (FootHills Publishing, 2008); Negative Time (Pudding House, 2007); After Malagueña (FootHills Publishing, 2005), and Poetry Assignments: The Book (Sage Hill Press, forthcoming). And he has thrice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

This event is sponsored by RIT and Palettes & Quills.//

Palettes & Quills

3^rd Biennial Poetry Chapbook Competition

with Judge J. P. Dancing Bear

Open to All Writers

http://www.palettesnquills.com

Prize: A $200 cash award plus 50 copies of the published book. Additional copies will be available at an author’s discount. All finalists will receive one free copy of the published book. All contest entrants will be offered a special discount on the purchase price of the published book.

A complete submission should include:

• Manuscript between 14-50 pages on 8 ½ x 1″ paper. Use a standard 12 pt font, such as Garamond or Times New Roman. Manuscripts should be in English and contain no illustrations.
• A cover sheet with the contest name (The Palettes & Quills 3^rd Biennial Chapbook Contest), your name, address, telephone, email, and the title of your manuscript. Your name should not appear anywhere else in the manuscript.
• A title page with just the title of the manuscript.
• An acknowledgements page. Poems included in your manuscript may be previously published, but please include an acknowledgements page listing specific publications.
• A complete Table of Contents.
• Payment of a $20.00 non-refundable entry fee (check or money order payable in U.S. dollars made out to Palettes & Quills). Please do not send cash. Multiple submissions are accepted, but we require a separate entry fee for each manuscript you submit.
• Self-addressed stamped post card for confirmation of receipt and a self-addressed envelope stamped (please use a Forever Stamp) for announcement of the winners. (International submissions must include an IRC.)
• You must also include a statement that all poems are your own original work.

Mail your entry to Donna M. Marbach, Palettes & Quills Chapbook Contest, 330 Knickerbocker Avenue, Rochester, NY 14615. Manuscripts will not be returned. No electronic or faxed submissions will be accepted. However, we will request an electronic copy of the winning manuscript.

Deadline: September 1, 2012. Manuscripts postmarked after September 1 will not be read.

Winners will be announced on the Palettes & Quills website in December 2012.

Manuscripts by multiple authors will not be accepted. Translations will not be accepted.

Simultaneous submissions are accepted. If your manuscript is accepted for publication elsewhere, you must immediately notify Palettes & Quills.

Judging: Final judge is J. P. Dancing Bear. J. P. Dancing Bear is the author of nine collections of poetry, most recently, Inner Cities Of Gulls (2010, Salmon Poetry), winner of a PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles National Literary Awards. His next two books are: Family of Marsupial Centaurs, will be released by Iris Press; and Fish Singing Foxes, will be released by Salmon Poetry. He is editor for the American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press. Bear also hosts the weekly hour-long poetry show, OUT OF OUR MINDS, on public station, KKUP and available as podcasts.

//

To download a PDF of the guidelines, click here.//

AFC Wildcard Games

 at 

(6) Cincinnati Bengals at (3) Houston Texans

This game is interesting because of Houston’s quarterback situation. Jake Delhomme performed fairly well last week against Tennessee, and in this league you need to pass to win. Houston’s passing game should be good enough, and the run game will be very good with Arian Foster Foster and Ben Tate. However, Cincinnati and Andy Dalton are playing alright, and they had a lead on Houston a few weeks ago, but I still see Houston winning this whether it’s Delhomme or T. J. Yates at quarterback. Plus, I like Houston’s defense. However, it will be close. Cincinnati Bengals 20, Houston Texans 24.

 at  

(5) Pittsburgh Steelers at (4) Denver Broncos

I just watched the whole Denver-Kansas City game. I feel sorry for Denver’s coach, John Fox, and offensive coordinator, Mike McCoy. I mean, they only have half an offense to work with. They looked so handicapped. They were calling run plays when they should have been passing. It’s a mess on that offensive. If they ever fall behind, they won’t be able to catch up. What is amazing is how well they run. Every teams knows they are going to run because they can’t pass or won’t pass, and they still run so well. With an offensive line like that, you think they’d be able to pass, but they can’t. Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers defense will manhandle this Broncos team even if Rashard Mendenhall doesn’t play. The Broncos just don’t stand a chance. Pittsburgh Steelers 34, Denver 10.

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NFC Wildcard Games

 at 

(6) Detroit Lions at (3) New Orleans Saints

Matthew Stafford is a terrific quarterback, and he’s been carrying this team since Jahvid Best’s injury. However, without a substantial running game, playing the hottest team in the league is doomed to failure, but it will be exciting to watch. New Orleans Saints 40, Detroit Lions 31.

 at 

(5) Atlanta Falcons at (4) New York Giants

Atlanta looked real good in week 17, and so did the Giants. The Falcons have only beaten two teams with winning records – the Lions and the Titans. The win over the Lions was a transition time for the Lions, who no longer had Best. The Giants have only beat one team with a winning record, the Patriots, and a couple of .500 teams. So do both these teams seem better than they really are? Let’s break them down for this game. Passing: Matt Ryan vs. Eli Manning. Manning had more yards, but I like Ryan better, but only a bit. Their running games are almost equal, too. Brandon Jacobs plus Ahmad Bradshaw for one game can equal Michael Turner. Defense advantage goes to Atlanta. I just like Atlanta better despite the Giants home field advantage. Atlanta Falcons 27, New York Giants 20.

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AFC Divisional Games

 at 

(3) Houston Texans at (2) Baltimore Ravens

It’s a good thing this game is in Baltimore, because Joe Flacco isn’t very good on the road. Hopefully, Anquan Boldin returns, but even if he doesn’t, the Ravens defense should be able to contain the Texans offense enough to win in a game that will feature lots of running. The game will look closer than this final score: Houston Texans 13, Baltimore Ravens 27.

 at 

(5) Pittsburgh Steelers at (1) New England Patriots

The only team in the AFC that I think can beat New England is the Steelers. The Ravens might be able to keep up because of their defense, but their passing game isn’t good enough, especially on the road. The Steelers, however, can keep up with the Patriots’ offense should it turn into a shootout, and the defense might even be able to stop the Patriots offense a few times, whereas the Patriots defense won’t be able to stop the Steelers offense too easily. With all that said, I don’t know if the Steelers offense is good enoough, especially if Mendenhall doesn’t play. Isaac Redman is a fine running back, but can’t he do it on his own. Patriots are at home. Pittsburgh Steelers 27, New England Patriots 31.

.

NFC Divisional Games

 at 

(5) Atlanta Falcons at (1) Green Bay Packers

The Falcons can win this game if they slow it down, but it’s Green Bay and Green Bay is at home. This could be a shootout since the Packers have no real defense or run game. Unless three weeks off does something to Aaron Rodgers, the Packers will win. The Falcons aren’t the team that can beat the Packers, but they will scare them. Atlanta Falcons 20, Green Bay Packers 34.

 at 

(3) New Orleans Saints at (2) San Francisco 49ers

I love this game and both of these teams. These are the only NFC teams that can stop the Packers. The 49ers have an amazing defense, and the offensive line is so good. If they had some good receivers and a better quarterback, man, they’d be unstoppable. Alex Smith is good, but he’s not there yet. He can’t will a win in the final minutes, which is what this game will probably come down to. I want the 49ers to win, but: New Orleans Saints 27, San Francisco 49ers 20.

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AFC Conference

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Championship Game

.

 at 

(2) Baltimore Ravens at (1) New England Patriots

All you have to do is read above to know how I think this game will play out. Flacco on the road is not very good this year, and Tom Brady is always good. Unless, the Patriots make a bunch of early mistakes, the Patriots will be heading to the Super Bowl. Baltimore Ravens 19, New England Patriots 27.

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NFC Conference

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Championship Game

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 at 

(3) New Orleans Saints at (1) Green Bay Packers

How is it that three best teams in the league (New England Patriots, Green Bay Packers, and New Orleans Saints) have the three worst pass defenses? Anyway, I like the Saints in this. I think they can compete with the Packers. I think the Packers will collapse. I think Darren Sproles and the Saints run game will be the deciding factor. I see lots of screens for the Saints. I see Rodgers becoming human this game. I see Tracy Porter and Roman Harper having a couple of deciding plays for the Saints defense. I see the Saints in the Super Bowl. New Orleans Saints 45, Green Bay Packers 38.

.

Super Bowl XLVI

Funny, I picked this at the beginning of the year, and here I am again. I didn’t do it to be consistent either. I think what I said about the Saints-Packers game can be said here. The Patriots and Packers seem like AFC-NFC mirrors to me. I think the Saints can keep up with the Patriots and then win with the run at the end. At the beginning of the year, I picked the Patriots. This time, I say Drew Brees and Sproles carry the Saints to their second Super Bowl win. New England Patriots 29, New Orleans Saints 38.//

Why not order a copy now?! Just click here.//

The picture above shows the bottle in the craziest wine rack I’ve ever seen. My brother gave it to me for Christmas, which the family celebrated early this year. Isn’t it crazy?! It’s just a piece of wood with a hole and keeps its balance and holds the wine without tipping over. I’m really in awe of this rack. It’s amazing. When my brother gave it to me, I thought it might be a wine rack. The slanted cut of the whole indicated that, but I couldn’t figure out how it would work. I struggled to figure it out, but I could not. Then he showed me. I couldn’t believe it, and I still don’t.

But to the wine.

This cab is a blend. It’s 95% Cabernet Sauvignon and the remaining 5% is Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Syrah. I found that out from their notes, which you can download and read by clicking: Columbia-Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 notes.

The color is a dark purple, but it has hints of spry brightness, especially in the meniscus. It looks lively like it’s saying, “Hey man, don’t despair on this dark winter night with no snow to be seen for miles, even though there should be a foot or more of the lovely white. I come with the vigors of spring and the hooves of Pan.”

Adam Reeder's “Pan With His iPod”

The nose is simple, straight-forward, and not big or deep as you may expect from a cab, but it does have some darkness. I also get some vanilla and some other sweet smell, maybe chocolate. Oh, and some cassis.

I pick up tastes of chocolate and cherries and on the dry finish are some spices and maybe some clove. It’s kinda fruity, but I’m not sure what fruits, maybe a hint of melon and/or mango.

It’s really not complicated, but it’s quite good. Plus, it’s not very big, so it can pair well with many more foods. OH! and as mentioned before, it’s awesome with thai peanut curry sauce: http://thelinebreak.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/perfect-thai-peanut-curry-sauce-cabernet-sauvignon-combo-compliment/.

I love this wine mainly because it’s so good for under $10. It’s not a 90 good, but it’s an 89. Go get.//

I went looking for images of this wine, and I noticed that some places were noting that this is a blend, but the percentages were different with each place. So I went to the Franciscan website and found the correct information. Here’s the breakdown:

• Cabernet Sauvignon 86%
• Merlot 12%
• Cabernet Franc, Petite Verdot, and Malbect 2%

(I’m not sure why they spelled “Malbec” with a “t” at the end, but they did.) To download some more information, click Franciscan Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 PDF to read their PDF about the wine. While you are reading that, I’ll do the tasting.

The PDF says the color of this cab is Ruby red. I’ll agree. I’ll also point out how the meniscus is purple, like the purple you see on the horizon at sunset.

On the nose I first get plum, dark cherry, and vanilla. Then I get some mushrooms and toast. I can barely smell the cab franc, which always stands out to me.

Hm. All those grapes in the two percent are undermining this wine. The Merlot, however, is saving it. It’s like a battle between the juicy Merlot and the dark two percent, and the Cab is on the sidelines not sure which side to join.

As for tasting notes, I get pepper and mushrooms. It finishes with cassis, like the PDF says. It’s also dry on the finish. The more I sip, the drier it gets, but, also, the more some cherries come out. Juicy cherries. I think the Merlot is winning the battle. You know there is also some cola in there somewhere, too. Again, the more I sip the more chewy it gets, and the dryness sticks to the roof of the mouth.

This is such an interesting wine. It doesn’t know what it wants to do. It’s erratic except that it gets better with each sip. This would be good with some Chinese food. Something with pork. Like a pork in a plum sauce. Mmmmmmm. And fried rice. Or pork in a barbeque sauce.

I like this but not for the price. There are so many good cabs out there for less. I don’t know how anyone gave this 94 points, let alone over 90. I’d say like 89 or 88. I’d rather drink the Columbia Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 for $8. Half the price and better. Don’t underestimate that Columbia Crest. I think I might be having an affair with that wine. You wouldn’t want to be seen with it in “good” company, but, man, it can show you a good time.

American Prayer is The Doors best album. It’s a great album. Can we still like The Doors? Yes, just like I enjoy Columbia Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon 2007.//

I was in a writing workshop in a PhD program somewhere. There were at least four people in the class. There was an invisible but obviously present student, who may have been Silas H. He sat to my left. There was a professor to the right. All I could see was his chest and his right arm. I think it was David Kirby, which would put me at Florida State University. And then there was another student. She may have been a TA or just a student that had been there for at least a year. She said we were going to do a creative writing exercise. She handed me a plastic cup of water. It was one of those semi-transparent plastic cups that are gray in color. They have those ridges in the middle for grips, and the plastic is really thin. If you press to hard, you get those white fault lines in the cup. She said, “We are going to do a tasting. The first thing I want you to do is to smell its bouquet. What does the side of the water smell like to you, Tom?” I really enjoyed that she asked what the side of the water smelled like because I think the edge of the wine smells different from the inner part of the wine. I responded, “The edge of the water has a bouquet of air. I also pick up a hint of dryness or dustiness that reminds me of my second-grade classroom.”

Then the dream kinda evaporated. I think the point of the dream was to tell me that I was thirsty and I should get up and get a glass of water. My dreams do that sometimes. They give me clues to get up and get something to drink when I’m dehydrated, or they will give me clues to get up and go to the bathroom or to remember to breathe.

Then I thought, “Hey, I do wine tastings. Why not do a water tasting. And in the spirit of ‘In Pursuit of the Juiciest Wine,’ I’ll do ‘In Pursuit of the Juiciest Water’.” I wonder if water can be juicy? Anyway, here we go.

Today’s water will be Brockport tap water that was chilled in an orange Brita water pitcher.

I’m serving this water in a white wine glass. It’s been breathing for about 15 minutes. The nose has a slight hint of wood or mustiness to it. It smells like the outdoors. There’s also an underlying layer of salt. It’s very, very faint. When I smell it, I think of a dirty glacier in northern Montana.

The texture at first is crisp, but that could be because it is cold, for as it warms it become more malleable and thick. It has a long finish that brightens in the mouth. My teeth feel like glass or cheap crystal. And there is a bit of a dryness on the side of the tongues. I wonder if this is what dirty glacier water tastes like. I mean, it tastes good, and it feels good, but I keep thinking of a glacier in Montana, but not the Glacier National Park. There’s another one, and it actually may be in northwest Washington. I think that’s what I’m thinking of. But I’m not thinking of the main glacier. I’m thinking of the snow on the top of the mountain that is slightly browned and is dripping off as it melts.

I like this morning’s water. I hope you do to.//

As you may know, I love the Plungerhead Zinfandel. I wrote about it on day thirty-one of the juiciest wine tour. (Click here to read about it.) It’s my favorite, or was. Then I tried the 7 Deadly Zins. The foundation of both is remarkably quite identical, but the 7 Deadly Zins has a little extra going. There’s like a side show to it. So just to be sure and to fully enter that side-show, I will explore it with more detail by pitting Plungerhead Zinfandel 2009 against the 7 Deadly Zins 2008. In the end, there will be no losers because both are excellent.

Normally, my competitions between wines starts by comparing the colors, because that’s where the wine begins. That’s the first thing you notice. But in this competition, there will be a comparison of corks. Let’s call it the weigh-in before the boxing match.

The Plungerhead has a rubber stopper for a cork. It’s tightly sealed in by some winding plastic. It opens easy, and there’s a slight pop to it when you pull out the stopper. I really enjoy these stoppers because they are simple, they don’t affect the taste of the wine, and they never break. They will be a great replacement for cork in this world with limited cork supplies. Plus, most important, you can save and reuse the rubber stoppers for a number of things, including capping other wine bottles after opening them. I like this because sometimes the corks just don’t fit in again, especially those solid hard plastic corks that pretend to look like they are made out of cork but are not, or those other corks with the sponge-like center and the hard plastic casing which never fit in the bottle again. So this cork is a bonus for sure.

The 7 Deadly Zins cork is your standard cork, which is perfectly admirable. Once you pull out a standard cork, you can tell you certain things about the wine, especially from the cork’s stained bottom. How dark is that stain? How far up the cork does it go? Can you stamp the back of your hand with the wet, stained bottom and leave a mark? Does the stain have an odor? These are all useful and fun. This cork, however, broke in half, with one half floating in the bottle. Hopefully, this won’t affect the taste or the contest.

The Plungerhead wins the cork weigh-in stage, but I won’t let this affect the outcome of the wines. So there is no winner at this weigh-in as cork preference is purely subjective.

All right guys. Clink glasses and come out drinking.

The glasses of wine come out slowly and present their colors and menisci

The colors are somewhere between dark scarlet and Bulgarian rose, and the 7 Deadly Zins is darker or more opaque. Both menisci have an angelic glow about them. The color of the menisci is like red with a blue tinge. If robots turned into angels after they expired, this would be the color of their halos.

I give no advantage to either in color or menisci, but I am looking over my shoulder waiting for an oenophile Terminator to arrive.

Round Two. The Nose.

We’ll start with the 7 Deadly Zins. It smells jammy with plums, cherry, black licorice, black pepper, and some cola. The girlfriend picks up anise and sour cherries and some muskiness.

The Plungerhead nose is very similar but without the black pepper and less black licorice. It smells livelier and younger. It smells like it has bounce.

As I go back and forth, I pick up the muskiness in the 7 Deadly Zins, too. The other day, I tweeted that the 7 Deadly Zins smells like an old book at Christmas time.  I get less Christmas this time.

Ding ding.

This round goes to both. I like the youthful vibrancy in the Plungerhead and it does smell juicy, but the 7 Deadly Zins smells older like its got some stories to tell. The girlfriend like both noses equally.

Round Three. The Tasting.

I’ll start with the Plungerhead this time. The finish is sour, but in a good way. There’s some chalkiness to the texture, too, but it’s a mild chalkiness, which is easily made up for by the jamminess. A jamminess of a flat cola, strawberries, plums, and raspberries. And there’s a pepper to it, too. Maybe a white pepper, but I don’t pick up on that until after the finish. I think get some cloves, too. Man, it’s so yummy. The girlfriend gets strong blackberries especially on the aftertaste. To her it is thinner than expected. I think I agree. The 2008 had a fuller body. (By the way, a flat cola taste isn’t a bad thing unless it’s actually a cola.)

Wow, the finish on the 7 Deadly Zins is really quick. It just disappears on the taste. I really enjoy the lingering finish of the Plungerhead. I like to dwell on it, but the 7 Deadly Zins just fades away. The pepper really comes out in the taste and the anise is there, too, but it’s not annoying. This also has a hint of chalkiness to it. I also get raspberries, for sure, and blackberries or blueberries. It’s also drier than the Plungerhead. The taste of the 7 Deadly Zins, like the nose, is more mature than the Plungerhead. The 7 Deadly Zins is more serious. It reminds me of the library in Meet Joe Black.

In fact, I think I just figured this out. Plungerhead is the Brad Pitt of Zinfandels and 7 Deadly Zins is the Anthony Hopkins of Zins. On the taste, the girlfirend gets blackberries, some anise, spices, and it’s very smooth.

Ding ding ding. That’s the end of the battle. Who wins.

The girlfriend scores 10-9, 10-9, 10-9 in favor of the 7 Deadly Zins.

This judge, that’s me, scores it 10-10, 10-10, 10-9 in favor of the 7 Deadly Zins. For me, the 7 Deadly Zins is just fuller, and as it opens up it gets much better and smoother. (This may explain why the girlfriend thought both noses were equal at the beginning of the match but in the end she chose the 7 Deadly Zins.) The Plungerhead is awesome, but like a young man it comes out full force but then doesn’t go anywhere. It presents everything it has at the beginning. It doesn’t change as the air interacts with it.

Yes, as time goes by, the 7 Deadly Zins just gets more and more awesome, and the Plungerhead just stays at really good. You can’t go wrong with either. And the price isn’t a factor either. The Plungerhead is $12 and the 7 Deadly Zins is $13.

The 7 Deadly Zins and Plungerhead both started at like an 89 or 90 for me, but now the 7 Deadly Zins is like 92.

In the age old question “is better to burn out or fade away?” the Plungerhead is the burnout and the 7 Deadly Zins is the fade away. I wonder which is Stevie Wonder. In fact, comparing these wines is much like this scene:

//

By the way, I forgot that ”Bodegas” means “winery” in Spanish. So this wine is from the Beronia winery in Rioja, Spain. And here’s a little history about this winery.

Bodegas Beronia is found in the Rioja Alta area of the region which is situated to the west. In this area, the soil is mainly calcareous clay soil and the vineyards are on average at an altitude of 600 meters. This area’s climatic influences are from the Atlantic. However, due to the Cantabria and Demanda mountain ranges, it is sheltered from the worst Atlantic influences. It also boasts the Ebro river which creates a series of microclimates and provides much needed water for the vines. The situation of Bodegas Beronia is considered to be a unique place for the creation of wines of high quality.

The grapes used at Beronia come from vineyards from within a ten-mile radius of the cellars, ensuring that only the highest quality grapes enter the winery. A close relationship is maintained with the 150 vine growers who supply the grapes, guaranteeing that only the best quality grapes are selected and that the process is done so in the most natural way. Our technical experts frequently visit the estates to ensure that the use of fertilisers and chemicals are kept to a minimum. It is our priority to maintain healthy and high quality grapes.

Beronia, true to its tradition, produces a classic line of fine and well-balanced wines, Crianza, Reserva, and Gran Reserva. In addition to these two white wines, a young Viura and a barrel fermented Viura. However they satisfy their innovative and avant-garde side with an interesting range of single variety wines, special production Tempranillo and Beronia Mazuelo Reserva, making them the only winery in Rioja to produce a reserve wine from the Mazuelo grape.

(cited from Wine.com with some editing by me.)

And if you want even better history and story about this wine, check out the post on Le Dom di Vin. Now that’s a history!

And as explained in an earlier post:

Crianza means the wine has aged for two years and at least six months of that ageing was done in oak. Spain has some regulations, don’t you know. If you see a Reserva, that means the wine was aged three years with at least one year in oak. And if you see Gran Reserva, then it has aged for five years with at least 18 months in oak and three years in a bottle.

This is the Reserva, so it’s been aged for three years, and at least one of those years was in oak.

Enough.

To the wine!

Allons-y.

This wine looked darker when I poured it, and it’s still dark, but not as solid dark as I previously witnessed. The color actually pairs well with my dark red and black flannel. That’s right. I now pair my wines with my clothing.

The nose has dark berries, mustiness, tobacco, and some cranberries.

It has a sour, smoky finish. It’s a completely different wine on the finish. And it lingers for a long time in the mouth and throat and in the goose bumps that arise after the swallow. That was after the first taste. On the second taste, the sourness disappears, and the finish lasts as long as vapor.

Thinking of vapor. There’s a lot of alcohol in this one. Whoo.

Those other two grapes are pretty dominant in this wine. There are stealing the typical juiciness of the Tempranillo.

This wine would go good with steak and hamburgers and feta cheese. I keep wanting feta cheese with each sip.

There’s nothing exceptional about this wine, unless you like them dark. Robert Parker might like it, but I like mine a bit more fruitty and bright.

It’s still pretty good. I’d give it like a B+/89. It definitely needs some food to tame it.//

I want to do the same thing in the class, as well. But I can’t use the same poems, so I am going to use Nathan E. White’s “From Sense Each Inheritance Is Named.” This poem first appeared in Rock & Sling (Issue Six, Number Two. Summer 2011). It’s a fine journal out of Whitworth University in Spokane, WA, and edited by Thom Caraway.

In class, the line breaks will be made as a group effort. The students will decide where to put the line breaks, and I’ll insert them in a Word doc that is projected onto the wall. After they are done, we will compare their breaks to the poem’s breaks. As a result, I have to explain why the breaks are where they are in the poem. So here are the notes I wrote. I want to share them here because I think there are interesting things going on that I want to share with more than 22 students.

But first the poem.

     From Sense Each Inheritance is Named

     Whispering tsk, tsk the straw swishes:
     the boy watching the dust drift studies
     the absence of shadow in the fields.
     Before him, without a sound, dark shapes
     of men in their lines breaks off from ground.

     At the table, he studies faces
     held above each plate. He wonders why
     they must ask for a blessing. At night
     they talk of harvest, frost, how they need
     to rest, cold crossing the lower fields.

     While they sleep he fixes the distance
     between stars, imagining angels
     whose work here is the movement of air
     through bodies at rest: each one dreaming
     of cold fields, dust waltzing before light.

So that’s the poem. Here’s what I have to briefly say about it to my students. That is, here are my notes.

The first line seems pretty straight forward. It ends on punctuation and with straw swishing. It’s an image/thought all to itself. And it’s end-stopped, which means it ends on punctuation.

Sir Philip Sidney

The next line, while a bit awkward in its delivery, also delivers an image/thought for the line, but this new clause unit, runs on to the next line. This is called enjambment. When a sentence or clause is completed on the following line or lines, then the line is enjambed. It’s also known as a run-on line. This device was widely used by the Elizabethans, such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Sir Phillip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Thomas Campion, and it was also used by Milton. Then the use kinda vanished for a while until the Romantics in the 1800s, who resurrected it. They saw enjambment as a symbol of liberation from neo-classic rules. And it’s been all the rage for the last hundred or so years.

So what happens on an enjambed line is magic. There is an amount of time it takes the reader’s eye to go from the end of the line to the beginning of the next line. A lot can happen in this small time. This is where the reader’s imagination really interacts with the poem. This is where magic happens. In this case, on this line, it’s some minor magic, as we are left with a boy studying, but we wonder what he is studying. As we read this poem for the first time, which is kinda how a poem should always be read. The first reading is the experience, and each re-reading is to relive that same experience with new knowledge and meaning. This is why it’s so important to create an experience that is understandable on the first reading. We don’t want to confuse the reader or mislead the reader or trick the reader. All of those things kick the reader out of the poem. They make the poem an exclusive territory when it should be an all-inclusive territory. Just like when you talk to your friends, you try to speak clearly so they can be included in your experiences. Unless of course, you don’t want them as your friend, then you talk in an exclusive manner.

But here we are on the line turn. A boy is studying a dust drift or his work in front of him. We have the image of studying. But when we get to the next line we see what he is studying. He is studying “the absence of shadows in the fields.” Wow, that’s a pretty terrific image. He’s not only studying the absence of something, but the absence of shadows. It must be night. But what happens is that this poem creates two instances – the boy is studying a dust drift or something and the absence of shadows. Okay, so why not say

he studies a dust drift and the absence of shadows.

Isn’t that the same experience? Yes and no. It says the same thing, kinda, but the experience is much different. In the one line he is only studying a dust drift or something else that we imagine. Perhaps he is studying books. But this moment of studying is one experience. Then we get another experience on the next line, he’s “studying the absence of shadows in the field.” The statement I wrote, “he studies a dust drift and the absence of shadows” means he is studying both things at once. This poem creates two different instances for the reader. And this line is also end stopped.

Let’s look at another spot to make this more clear. Let’s look at the second stanza, which is filled with enjambed lines. Note how each line could be like its own story:

At the table, he studies faces

There’s an image that stands on its own, and it also recalls the “studies” from stanza one. Because he was studying the absence of shadows before, I get the feeling that he must be studying really intently. I mean, who studies the absence of anything, let alone shadows, without studying intently. That feeling now carries down here with the second use of “studies.” So he’s really studying faces.

held above each plate. He wonders why

Here the image is completed. People are praying and he’s studying them praying. Praying is an intense activity, too. So now we have two intensities. This line, too, kinda stands on its own as a mini-story – “held above each plate. He wonders why.” Eh, kinda. Anyway. Now he adds another intensity because “He wonders why.” At the end of this line, however, he doesn’t leave the reader with an image to hang on to. Similar to the second line in the first stanza, this second line has the reader start imagining on the line break. Here the reader is trying to figure out what he is wondering? Is he wondering about the faces the he is studying? Yes and no. And this is the beauty of the line break. He can create two instances, each one an experience that you can experience. It’s an accretion of experiences like the “studies.” The accretion here is that he is wondering about the faces in the intensity of prayer and he is wondering about why they ask for a blessing. You get to move with the author. He’s not saying “I’m wondering how they pray and why.” No. He’s delivering each experience to us as he experiences it. You, the reader, get to move with him.

This line also kinda reads like a mini-story – “they must ask for a blessing. At night.” So you have that effect. It’s like a weird, double enjambment in experience and meaning. For one sense is “He wonders why they must ask for a blessing” and the other sense/experience is “they must ask for a blessing at night.” It’s like one experience blends into another, as often happens in life. The fluidity of moving and living is occurring in this line. Also, it’s interesting how there is a slant rhyme occurring in stanza two’s second and third lines with the long I. “Why” and “night” are both magical and mysterious, so they are yoked together through a subtle harmony of the long I. We’ll hear this long I at the end of the poem, too. How do those long Is connect?

Anyway, to stanza two’s third line. So we’ve got that fluid experience going and another enjambed line. Here the reader is doing one of two things, they are either in the fluid experience asking for a blessing at night, or they have started a new thought with the new sentence, and most likely the latter. Here the reader holds on to their image of “night” on the line turn. You have to give the reader something to hold on to here. You have to give them hope. They are taking a big leap of faith to get from this line to the next. So they need something to hold to comfort them and transition them to the next line. Here they have the “night” to hold on to. We also expect some action to occur to on the following line. So maybe our minds are trying to figure out what happens “at night.” All sorts of things happen, and all those things that we can imagine happening are crucial and become part of the poem and the experience. What’s the first thing you think of when you read “at night.” Is it something scary or comforting? Either way, it will deliver you into the next line.

On the next line we learn what happens at night. They talk of the crucial things. That’s what happens at night. So if you imagined scary, you are still in that zone, because “harvest, frost” and “needs” are kinda scary when your life depends on these things. And if you were in the comfort zone of night, then you are abruptly taken out of that and get to experience something of dire importance. You get to feel the shift in mood.

Again, this line is enjambed. Like the second lines in the preceding stanzas, this line ends on an abstraction. The reader gets to imagine something on the line turn. At this point, the reader is probably thinking about the need of food because we were just at the dinner table and talking of harvest and frost, which we know can destroy a harvest and, thus, food. This is a real concern. So on this line turn, the reader is probably still thinking about the need for food and all the anxieties that come with the need for food, especially those who grow it themselves.

But on the line turn we get a surprise. We get “to rest.” That must feel good to read, especially after the studying and the intensities and anxieties we just felt. But then we get the comma and the rest of the sentence – “cold crossing the fields.” How do we read that? Is it like “to rest, as the cold crosses the lower fields.” Is it like a subjunctive?

Isn’t it interesting how he uses “crossing” with “a blessing” so close to each other?

Again, this line and the previous line rhyme. They rhyme with “need” and “fields.” They need the fields alright, and that connection is yoked together by the subtle long E sound. These are good ways to rhyme. When they connect things and they don’t get in the way of the poem.

Then we get this big line break or stanza break. Here we are left with the image of cold wind blowing across the fields and we still carry some of those worries, maybe.

Then we get to the next stanza, and everyone except the narrator is asleep. And we get the line “While they sleep he fixes the distance.” Again. Another mini-story. A line can often be a mini-story. But what the heck is he talking about? “He fixes the distance.” (Part of me is thinking this is weird like “I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in / and stops my mind from wandering / where it will go.” Which has its own unique conversation with the poem. But back to the poem.) I’m not sure what this line means on its own, but I’m compelled forward on the enjambed line. That’s another thing an enjambed line can do, it can propel you forward. It’s a place to gain momentum. It’s like centripetal force. You get whipped around. So we get whipped to the next line to answer the question in our heads, and it’s to fix “the distance / between stars.” Oh my god. What an image. And what does it even mean? What is wrong with the distance between stars? Nonetheless, he is going to fix them. He’s going to draw them close, I imagine. Perhaps to make warmth to save the crops.

So here we are on a new line, again, a mini-story. “between stars, imagining angels.” There’s nice balance on that line. The comma acts as a pivot. There are two words on each side. Two actions on each side. And the poem moves forward defining and redefining before it comes full circle with “dust” and the long I sound.

So what am I trying to say about the line break? Let me quote what I wrote in response to one of your fellow student’s poem:

On the line break, there is a brief but long pause as the reader’s eye moves from the end of the line to the beginning of the next. In that moment, all this magic happens. The reader is left on their own based on the image you give them there. They carry that image with them on the line turn and briefly ponder it and imagine it and feel it, and then the movement picks up again. It almost like being on the swings . . . . The line is like the moment the person is pushing you. The whole time that person’s hands are on your back, from the moment their hands receive you, cushion you, and push you off again, that’s like the line in poetry. The line break is all the free momentum that occurs the instant the fingertips and back depart from each other and you fly through the air. The line break is a propellant. It’s magical and freeing and thrilling.

The Swing as Line Break

//

Tonight I served it with homemade angel pasta that I got at the organic store. Even better.

And then I opened a bottle of Columbia Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon 2007. This bottle of cab is about $8, and it’s a damn good cab. It’s definitely the best cab under $10. If you’re low on cash and high on red wine needs, this is the wine to get.

So I am eating my dinner, listening to Lloyd Miller’s A Lifetime in Oriental Jazz that my friend just adised me to listen to, and watching the Partiots and the Chiefs on Monday Night Football. I can’t show you the game, but here’s a tune:

And then I took a sip of the wine. It’s amazing. The cab never tasted so good and peanut sauce got better with every bite. You may or may not like my taste in music (by the way the song gets better and more accessible about three minutes in), but this pairing is spot on. I highly recommend it.

Here’s my recipe:

• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1/8 cup coconut milk
• 1 tablespoons water
• 1 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon fish sauce
• 1 teaspoon Huy Fong’s Chili Garlic Sauce (which you can get most anywhere). Their Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce will probably work, too.
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 1 tablespooon chopped fresh cilantro
• Crushed peanuts to sprinkle on top

Just mix all those ingredients together in blender, except for the crushed peanuts. When your vegetables and protein are almost done sauteing, add the sauce. Then pour everything over rice and noodles and top with the crushed peanuts. And pour a glass of Columbia Crest Grand Estates Cabernet Sauvignon 2007. Yum.//

1. Jonathan Farmer’s “Jellyfish” (pages 10-11)
2. Holly Virginia Clark’s “The Birdhouse” (pages 18-19)
3. Lisa Akus’ “Pumpkin Poem (Untitled)” (page 36)
4. Martha Silano’s “Size” (page 43)
5. Keetje Kuipers’ “Letter to an Inmate in Solitary Confinement” (page 49)
6. Philip Metres’ “Letter to St. Petersburg” (page 50)

To read these poems and more, order a copy of the I-90 Poetry Revolution Issue from here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/redactionspoetry.

You can also read the Pushcart Prize nominated poems here: http://www.redactions.com/pushcart-poems.asp.

Click the image to make it bigger so you can read it.

Ok. enough whining. On to the wine.

Actually, I’m going to do an experiment. The next Introduction to Creative Class will be on poetry. It will be the first poetry class. In this class I plan to focus on abstractions and images. Why do young writers have such a hard time distinguishing between the two? I know I did. Why do young writers try to write poetically instead of just writing? I know I did. Anyway. This review will be like two reviews. One review will try to describe the wine with abstractions. And the other will try to describe the wine with some images and concrete stuff.

Tonight’s wine is Educated Guess Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 from Napa Valley. I got it for two reasons. The first was the label. The second was that someone or someplace gave it 89 points. Had I not seen that rating, I would have backed away. But here we are. Hop on board.

But first to get us in the proper mood – Oliver Nelson’s “Stolen Moments” from Blues and the Abstract Truth:

Now for the descriptions.

New rules. I’ll describe the wine with abstractions, and the girlfriend will describe with images.

Abstract Color: It’s the color of a newborn’s thought when seeing fall for the first time. Hmm. There are two images in there. It’s the color of an interpretation.

Concrete Color: A dark plumy color with some red.

Abstract Nose: The nose smells like the middle of the solar system. Near the asteroid belt. Hmm. No. That’s too many images. It smells like the berries of time. Ah. There we go. No. There’s still berries. It smells like the dark times before the eruption of change. It smells like a sad smile before a birthday. Ha ha!

Concrete Nose: It’s a little cranberry-like with some spices and perhaps some nutmeg. She says it smells like Christmas spices. And that it smells dry.

Abstract Taste: It tastes like prehistoric earth just after the lava cooled. It tastes like the steam rising from the lava. No. Those are images, too. It tastes dry. It tastes like red. It tastes like the edge of death but in a good way. It tastes like the last words of a famous painter. It tastes like a Paris tavern in the 1920s with Hemingway at a table writing and staring at a woman he wants to put into a story. Damn. All images. Arg. It tastes like the edge or certainty and the corner of joy.

Concrete Taste: It tastes alcoholic. It’s juicy. It’s like biting in currant berry that explodes in your mouth. It started interesting but became boring and unnoteworthy. (Ha. There’s the abstractions!)

I agree. It start off with some gusto. It has some talent. It’s like a boxing match. Talent, fine clothes, and experience vs. youth, impetuousness, and rags. It’s trying to be a real good wine, but behind it, perhaps the abundance of alcohol, there’s a thin layer of cheapness.

I’d say 88 points.

But you know, as the boxing match goes on, the young, cheap fighter is starting to falter. He’s fallen to the mat a couple of times. Talent and experience are winning out. The first rounds it came out strong, stumble a bit in the middle rounds, but is finishing the match strong. I give 89 points.

Most important. This wine taught me that it’s best to describe a wine with both concrete and abstract terms. A good poem does that, too, but the abstractions aren’t the dominant. They just appear every now and then like Miles Davis trumpet in songs from his later years.//

Come one. Come all. Come to the November 19th reading at A Different Path Gallery on 27 Market Street. The event starts at 7:30 p.m., and it’s free.

(To see the poster full size, click it. To download a printable copy, click Huff Black Reading Flier PDF.)

There’ll be wine, food, and maybe cannolis.

So who are these fine readers? And why are they the Godfathers of Rochester Poetry? That’s because Steve Huff does significant work at the epicenter of the Rochester literary scene – Writers & Books. And Ralph Black co-runs the long running (if not longest running in the United States) reading series – The Writers Forum at SUNY Brockport. So all poetry in the Rochester area must first go through them. Or else!

Here’s more about them.

Before Ralph Black became a respectable citizen of Western New York: he delivered The Washington Post to Spiro Agnew (after Agnew resigned from office). He cleaned carpets in government buildings in the nation’s capital. He was Fritz in the Nutcracker. He painted houses in Maine. He waited tables at a swank Italian restaurant that turned out to be a front for a Mafia-led cocaine operation. He hitchhiked to Williamsburg, VA, on a school day, to interview a craftsman who made miniature replicas of Viking ships. He ate peyote buttons while sitting in a cave in the Shenandoahs. He was bounced on Isaac Stern’s knee. He stole a 20 lb. tin of cashews from the deli where he worked. He fought fires for the Forest Service in Idaho. He nearly fell off a mountain in the backcountry in the Olympics. Ditto for a cliff in Maine. Ditto for a cliff in Virginia. Presently, he lives in Monroe Co., NY, where cliffs are few and far between.

Steven Huff is the author of two books of poems, most recently More Daring Escapes, and a collection of stories, A Pig in Paris. A Pushcart Prize winner in fiction, and an O.Henry Prize finalist, his poetry has been read on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac, and been chosen by form US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser for his American Life in Poetry feature news column. He is Director of Adult Education and Programs at Writers & Books, and teaches writing at RIT, and in the Solstice MFA Program at Pine Manor College in Boston. From 2002 through 2008 he was host of Fiction in Shorts, a regular feature on WXXI-FM and WJSL-FM.

This event is sponsored by A Different Path Gallery, Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, and Lift Bridge Book Shop.//

These are my initial notes towards an Investigative Poetics. I am trying to negotiate what this means to me. In this writing, I am drawing exclusively from Ed Sanders Investigative Poetry (San Francisco: City Lights, 1976) (yes, I found and purchased a first edition on abe.com for a very fair price), and I am trying to interpret it or make it mean to me. In the end, I think I will usurp the term, Investigate Poetry, for my own means, but pay high tribute to Mr. Sanders. There is absolutely nothing wrong with his version of Investigative Poetics. It is highly commendable. I just wish to go someplace else with it. Below are the notes.

//

On page 11 of Ed Sanders Investigative Poetry, Sanders writes two important things in regards to defining Investigative Poetry:

History-poesy, or investigative poetry, can thrive in our era because of the implications of a certain poetic insight, that is, in the implications of the line, “Now is the time for prophecy without death as a consequence,” from Death to Van Gogh’s Ear, a Ginsberg poem from 1958.

and

For this is the era of description of the All.

I’ll get to the first quote in a moment, but the last one, man, is that ever true today with the internet and its Google with so much information at hand. All the information we have today is not only overly readily available and abundant, but it has lent the way to very, very detailed people. In the States, we over analyze everything, in part, because of all the data we have. All this data provides us with the information we need to describe the All, or as I would say, “connect the All.”

With our imagination and its ability to leap and associate and with all this information, a copulation is at hand. Information inseminates the imagination to make more connections. It’s now possible to study, for instance, the history of the crabcake and soon find connections to Baltimore, the Baltimore Ravens, Edgar Allen Poe,  the history of the macabre, the history of literature, an episode of the sit-com Cheers or The Simpsons, and a stunning investigation into American culture, all the way to how our Paleolithic and Neanderthal ancestors hunted and ate food, and how the crab evolved, how through the course of history crab was served, hunted, and was a component of economics, how it affected astrology and the universe, how it affects cancer when improperly connected to on an etymological level as Skeats did in the first few editions of his An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, and how that improperly connected etymology affected James Joyce when he wrote Ulysess, which was banned in America like Ginsberg’s Howl, who is the ancestor of Whitman and who is the contemporary of Edgar Allen Poe, who is from Baltimore where they make delicious crabcakes.

The study of one thing can connect the universe, though I’m not sure this is what Sanders has in mind, but it’s what I have in mind.

As for the first quote, I’m concerned with the “History-poesy” part. I had never though that would be synonymous with Investigative Poetics, but now that I think about, it has to be. How can an investigation occur without a study of history. All investigations will have to go into the past. The past is what defines us. There’s a long tether in humanity and it stretches back to the Neanderthals and to the first amoebas to cosmic background radiation to quantum foam to the big bang and into the future where it will end in fire or ice . . . or Frost.

Example Investigative Poetry texts:

• Charles Olson’s The Maximus Poems
• Hart Crane’s The Bridge
• William Carlos Williams Paterson
• Ezra Pound’s Cantos
  
• Sanders says Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, but I’m not quite sure why at this point
• T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland
• Jerome Rothenberg’s Poland 1931
• Ed Dorn’s Gunslinger
  
• Many of William Heyen‘s collection of poems
• Any of my collections of poems (I mention not for ego, but because I was doing this before I knew of Investigative Poetry and now I want to study what I’ve been doing.)

Could any of these books have been written without an historical perspective? The Maximus Poems must study the history of Gloucester, The Bridge without a long study into the creation of the Brooklyn Bridge and the events that happened on it during the construction and after couldn’t come to be, nor Paterson without a study of Paterson or even the Genesee River in Rochester, NY, nor the Cantos, which is almost all history, nor The Wasteland, which meanders through history and Eliot’s present, nor Gunslinger without an historical study of the Wild West and philosophy. History, does in fact, seem to be the key. (Joyce’s Ulysess, if it were a poem, would fall into Investigative Poetry, too, and on a number of levels, as he charts Dublin precisely and then writes in each of the main styles of writing through the history of writing, and the whole early Celtic alphabet thing.)

//

Our minds naturally associate, so why does Investigative Poetry seem so foreign to the contemporary poet?

//

In a moment of Olsonian possession and Ginsbergian yawp, Sanders announces:

     The verse of the investigative poet of
     genius will discharge data as if scanning
     eye-brains were passing across a high-energy grid,
     the vectors of verse-froth leaping up from
     the verse-grids at every points. High Energy
     Verse History Grids!

High Energy Verse History Grids. The investigative poem must be a high-energy discharge. The poet must gather the energy of the original source and put it into the poem. The poem is a capacitor. It contains the energy of the investigation. No wonder Sanders says to channel the voice and rhythms of Ginsberg as the means of transferring that energy.

The investigative poem is an extension of Olson’s “Projective Verse.” Investigative Poetry needs the mandates of Olson, which Sanders shares with us:

A poem is energy transferred from where the poet got it, by way of the poem itself to, all the way over to, the reader.

and

Then the poem must, at all points, be a high energy construct and, at all points, an energy-discharge.

(p 21, quoting Olson from “Projective Verse”).

Let me tell you of Investigative Poetry. When you, the Investigative Poet, are doing the research, and you are always doing research as commanded by the muse and demanded by the imagination, you read a lot. Even in the most mundane of research writings you will find moments of passion from the author. Here is where you know something is happening. Here is where you know the author knows something more than the facts are saying. Here is where you, the investigative poet, must be at high alert. Here is your inspiration. Muse be ready. Imagination raise your eyebrows. The investigation is about to begin. But it’s not the passion we study. It’s what precedes the passion. Preceding the passion are the facts. It’s the running start to the passionate leap that the author makes. Where the author transcends the facts. We, the investigative poet, must go back and start running on our own and then make our leap. The author has left us a trail. Can we get to the same place? Will our landing be different? No matter as long as we make a perfect three-point landing like a sky diver landing on solid ground. The muse and imagination will do with the facts as they please, and they will create a great truth as great as the author’s truth but more musical and more readily available to the novice or uneducated in the field. We, the Investigative Poet, break it down. We make it accessible. We make the jump obvious for the reader. We give the reader a bridge, though the reader won’t realize the bridge is there. The Investigative Poet is the interpreter of the universe. And we, as Investigative Poet translators, must follow Pound’s logopoeia, melopoeia, and phanopoeia. At bare minimum we translate verbatim and insert line breaks and tidy up the language – logopoeia. At our best, we find the best rhythms and music to give the reader’s legs the energy to run and jump from fact to truth – melopoeia. More often, we lay down a bridge for the reader, though kinda shaky like a rope bridge across a great divide – phanopoeia – but it gets us, the Investigative Poet, the facts, and the reader to the truth.

Indiana Jones is the Investigative Poet of the Big Screen

The Investigative Poet, in the end, is the medium between fact and truth.

Indiana Jones is what Sanders wants the investigative poet to be. Delving into the research. Keeping careful notes. Cross checking. Making leaps from the limited information he has has into the truth. And killing the right-wing Nazis.

//

Just so it is known, Ed Sanders back in 1976 invented emoticons, though he called it them emotion-glyphs.

It seems obvious that the language of poetry may well evolve into 1000 color hieroglyphics utilizing a near infinity of typographies. The availability of colors & photographic images and the 100′s of type faces, even in a good art supply store, foretell the birth of an international hieroglyphics. The upcoming laser hologram revolution – that is, poetry and collage and perspective join to thrill the eye-brain with glowing, animated (“poetry in motion,” the rock-and-roll song so prophetically sang), multi-color, 3-d “memory gardens” or verse-grids. This new hieroglyphic language may well use letterless symbols, emotion-glyphs say, 3-d soundless glyphs or tiny photographs depicting complex emotional states, inserted in the hieroglyphic grids, to augment the poet’s inherited word-horde. (p 33. My bold.)

//

Sanders’ Investigative Poetry is about real investigation, however. Investigating as to expose those right-wing, oppressive cops who spied on Wordsworth and Coleridge and who caused Wordsworth to lose his home, who spied on Shelley until he left the country, that made Dostoevsky complacent, to expose the “FBI-CIA Surrealistic-Complex” (p 23), or:

Victor Jara With Children Supporters

Nor shall we forget how the Chilean poet-singer Victor Jara was leading a group of singers while imprisoned in the soccer stadium following the 1973 CIA-coup in Chile, and the killers chopped off his fingers to silence his guitar, and still he led the singing – till they killed him, another bard butchered because of the U. S. secret police (p 12).

or

Nor shall we forget how the Czar’s secret police hounded Alexandr Pushkin with a nightmare of surveillance and exile. In fact, a brief look at certain aspects of Pushkin’s life is here appropriate, in order to gauge some of the pressures that can force a poet “to become more objective,” or, as the English professor who writes for the CIA-funded magazine might giggle, “to come to terms with the harsh facts of life.” Or to escape into the forgetful symbols (p 12).

Sander’s investigations are more political than mine. Good for him. There should be more political poetry and exposing. An Investigative Poetry that leads to “a genre of Indictment Verse” (p 38). Sanders then expands on how Indictment Verse can sound:

Once again we can reiterate how Howl, with its long-line iambo-anapestic, bacchic and beat dactylic structure, could easily serve as model for blistering indictments and descriptions of your investigations. Read it a few times and see how it fits: invent melodies for sections of it. Chant it with percussion, say, of a tambourine as background; practice singing your investigation grids with its long-breath rhythms. If Sappho’s unique metre could serve as the basis for a whole school of endeavor, why cannot certain modern poems serve in the same way? (p 38)

Man, conviction by poetry. I love it.

"Such meditation would certainly help to center the poet, who, say just last night had gotten roughed up trying to walk past Frank Sinatra's body-guards in Las Vegas to try and ask him a few questions about his buddy Sam Giancana and CIA assassination squads" (p 32).

I can do the political poetry thing, but the way Sanders goes about it is not my way. I’m too shy for that, and he has a whole section explaining why this isn’t for they shy. He gives you tips on what you should do when you go deep the oppressors realm or confront Frank Sinatra.

Nonetheless:

Do not hesitate to write investigative songs (as in Ginsberg’s smash CIA-Calypso song detailing CIA dope-dealing in SE Asia). No one owns the modes. Ahh the modes. Do not hesitate to use every mode that anyone ever devised. The modes of poetry are more powerful than any so-called magic, for they are a proven input. Do not hesitate (p 38).

Some of his investigative styles, however, are useful even to us shy folks. Dig deep in your research and keep good notes and cross references and document.

//

More notes will come. This is just the first round. //