The latter, of course, is a wildly popular, mammoth festival held in Germany to promote Bavarian culture and its greatest contributions to international cuisine — namely, sauerkraut, bratwurst, and Marzen beer. The former, however, is a tiny, little-known birthday celebration for the greatest writer ever brought forth from a rowhouse on Hollins Street — namely, Henry Louis “H. L.” Mencken.

And I for one — and for many reasons — make it a point to partake in both annual events.

The first, better known as “Mencken Day,” is held every year on or about September 12 (Mencken’s birthday) and attracts a hundred or so scholars, enthusiasts, idolaters, and other ignoramuses, who gather in an upstairs room at the Enoch Pratt Library to read from works by, and discuss in minute detail the life of, the so-called “Sage of Baltimore.” For example, a recent program boasted a speaker who “has done heroic work in exhuming the [Pratt’s] entombed collection” of sheet music favored by Mencken and other amateur musicians conjoined in the weekly Saturday Night Club gathering. A Sermon on the Mount this ain’t. But, as card-carrying members of The Mencken Society, my father and I have delighted in such pecksniffery off and on for nearly 20 years.

When unable to attend “The Day,” I attempt to please Mencken’s ghost — he died in 1956 — by picking something to read, either by or about him. With hundreds of books, broadsides, papers, palimpsests, and the like already in print, there’s never a shortage of available material. And this year, another tome was added to the pile: the aptly titled Mencken on Mencken: A New Collection of Autobiographical Writings. The key word here is “new.”

Late in life (and, later, in the afterlife), Mencken revitalized his flagging reputation by publishing half a dozen autobiographical works, the most (positively) popular being the nostalgic three-volume Days collection, in which Mencken chronicled his life from infancy to the start of his career as a journalist. They were rollicking reads and solidified his reputation as one of the most influential American writers of the first half of the 20th century. Other books, published posthumously, including several memoirs and his controversial diary, spotlighted specific aspects of his career, public persona, and personal life.

So it seems hard to believe that the unabashedly self-promoting author could have more to say about himself — Mencken estimated he had published 10 million words in his lifetime — but apparently he did. The 44 pieces in Mencken on Mencken, gathered and edited by S.T. Joshi, include snippets of reportage and reflection covering facets of Mencken’s life and thought that were only hinted at or missing from his other self-histories. Written over a period of 50 years, for such popular periodicals as the New Yorker, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and the Chicago Tribune, none has ever appeared in book form. The topics cover some familiar territory but are no less entertaining — incidents from everyday life, accounts of friends and colleagues, ruminations on his careers as author, journalist, and editor, his views on politics and religion, and several travelogues from trips abroad.

It’s the latter category that’s proved most appealing, and one of my favorites seems fitting to mention here now. Called “The Beeriad,” and published in 1913, it’s a rousing account of Mencken’s encounters with the food, brews, and barmaids of Munich. Fueled by pride in his German heritage, and guided by his self-proclaimed “capacity for gusto,” Mencken let few details pass by his hungry eyes — from the genius of sauerkraut (“a perfect grass, embalmed to perfection”), to the quality of the native beers and beer halls (“the best beer in Munich is the Spatenbrau; the best place to get it is at the Hoftheater Cafe in the Residenzstrasse”), and the ideal means for a man to enjoy it all: “with the seidel of that incomparable brew tilted elegantly toward his face and his glad eyes smiling at Fraulein Sophie through the glass bottom.” It’s an outdated account and no longer (if ever) could serve as a useful guide to the city. But, in terms of the caliber of the prose and acerbity of the wit, here as elsewhere in the book, it’s certainly vintage Mencken.

Now, it would seem improper not to imbibe a little while perusing (and carousing with) Mencken. And what better beverage than what he termed “the best beer in Christendom”: the Marzen, the kind commonly served to the millions of revelers who gather in Munich to celebrate Oktoberfest, which begins (albeit confusingly) on September 18 and runs to early October.

The beer is named for March, the month in which it was traditionally brewed. Long before refrigeration, brewers in Germany would make one last vatful before summer’s heat made beer-making impossible. They brewed this last-ditch batch in early spring and lagered, or stored, it underground in ice cellars or caves until September or early October, when brewing could resume. It’s this prolonged period in “za cooler” that creates its characteristic rich, caramel sweetness, signature coppery color, and subtle hop aroma.

Oktoberfest is one of my favorite holidays for beer-picking, for several reasons. First, there are always so many choices. Nearly every brewery, on both sides of the Big Pond, rolls out its own version. Second, Oktoberfests are great all-around, very drinkable beers that provide a nice transition from the lighter tonics of summer to winter’s heartier brews. Best of all, they go with many different foods, from grilled burgers and sausages to pizza and fried chicken.

This year, I sipped on a mix of new (or new-to-me) seasonals, including some model Marzens and a few non-standard autumn ales, while supping on a simple dinner of pan-seared bratwurst, served with either broiled potato wedges and asparagus, or pasta with sauteed zucchini and tomato sauce. All six performed very well at the table, in different ways.

Paulaner Oktoberfest-Märzen, from Paulaner Salvator Thomasbrau AG, is a staunch traditionalist. Although lighter in color than some Oktoberfests, its roasted malt aroma, creamy-soft, full body, and nutty sweetness make it a classic. It’s a very approachable, very versatile amber lager that said “jah!” to the salty, crsipy veggies.

Dominion Octoberfest, Old Dominion Brewing. This is as close to a traditional Marzen as you can get this side of Bavaria. Smooth and malty, slightly sweet with a hint of hops, it was delicious with the smoky, spicy meat and wunderbar with honey mustard.

Octoberfest, Samuel Adams. This seasonal deliciously illustrates the possibilities to be had when you combine Old World charm and Yankee ingenuity. Dark orange in color, and giving off a robust malty fragrance, this Marzen is slightly hoppier and has a spicy bite to match the zesty tomato sauce.

Prosit!, Clipper City Brewing Company. The brewery calls this an “Imperial Oktoberfest Lager,” which means it’s richer and more potent than its Bavarian brethren. Truth is, despite the skull-and-crossbones label, and 9.0% alcohol content, this is a sweet, creamy, good-natured Marzen that loves a bratwurst.

Oktoberfest, Otter Creek Brewing. With its ruddy color and bold use of hops, this beer is technically an amber ale. But I think its slightly pronounced bitterness complements (and compliments) the expected malt sweetness, creating a crisp, welcome alternative to the common seasonal.

Tumbler Autumn Brown Ale, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. This is a nut brown ale — emphasis on the “nut” — with an earthy aroma and a dry, mildly bitter flavor that suited the acidic asparagus. Yet it’s sweet (there are hints of burnt caramel and roast coffee) and rich enough to serve as a stand-in at any Oktoberfest offering.

So, there you have it, the perfect ingredients for celebrating the two September events in style. Or if, like Scribbleskiff, you can’t post at either party this year, then combine efforts and establish a new tradition: Grab a book on Mencken, fill a krug with Marzen, don some dirndls or lederhosen, and host your own “Mencktoberfest.”

As always, tell us what you think. Have you ever been to Oktoberfest or “Mencken Day”? Are there other autumn seasonals that you think everyone should try? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

And be sure to visit (and join) the Scribbleskiff page on Facebook (find it here), where you can partake in wall-to-wall conversations, find additional information and suggestions from readers, and more.

Originally published September 13, 2010.

I love everything about it, from the mythology to the mashed potatoes; from my family’s adherence to our culinary traditions (like this regional requisite) to the outlandish reinterpretations I’ve encountered elsewhere (like this ghastly gallinacean); from the nearly non-secular nature of the celebration to its unabashed, yet rational, nationalism; from its emphasis on amplitude and generosity to its freedom from mandatory “gifting,” etc.

In other words, it’s the perfect domestic festival: you stay home from work, cook or contribute dishes of delicious food, celebrate your connectedness with as many of your favorite people as you can stand, watch a parade or two on TV, play some football, say “thank you” more than “please,” and nosh and nip and (when lucky) nap. Rinse and repeat. That’s it, easy as pie — except for all the setting- and cleaning-up, of course. There are endless variations on this theme and very few regulations, and that’s about as American as it gets.

Oddly enough, it’s also one of the exclusively Yankee celebrations that requires the inclusion of French produce — namely wine and beer. As any regular reader of this blog knows (or can guess), we’re not here to discuss the former. In fact, when someone asks me what wine I want to drink with my meal, I say “beer!” Glib and annoying, yes; but no less effective, and no less true on the fourth Thursday of each November. Especially because, in this case, the beer of choice comes from the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France, near Belgium.

Biere de garde, or “beer for keeping,” is a light-bodied, slightly malty, and moderately hopped farmhouse ale (similar to a Belgian ale, such as saison) with a strong herbal component that is, in the words of Garrett Oliver, brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery and author of The Brewmaster’s Table, “brilliant with turkey.” The aromatic quality of biere de garde, which is usually sold in champagne-like bottles, perfectly matches all the various and savory qualities of the Thanksgiving Day meal — from the salty seasonings on the crunchy, browned skin, to the bouquet of veggie flavors in the stuffing and sides, to the rich poultry and game essences in the meat — and it makes everything taste juicy.

Castelain is my favorite biere de garde. It’s like liquid stuffing: slightly sweet, bready, earthy, tangy, and the perfect accompaniment to nearly every ingredient on a plateful of the standard turkey meal — and, I would bet, it pairs well with the components of a non-standard one, too. Unfortunately, as I have come to discover over the past few years, it’s also hard to come by right now. Because biere de garde is typically brewed to be consumed as a summer beer, it’s not readily available the rest of the year. And despite the fact that Belgian-style ales are all the rage among microbrewers — for instance, the number of tripels on the shelf seemingly has trebled in the last six months — scant few Americans are brewing bieres de gardes, based on what I could find in my area, at least. It’s a shame, really, because I think they’re missing the boat (the Mayflower, as it were) when it comes to creating the perfect pour for the premiere American meal.

So, following a failed attempt to locate the proper bottles to serve at my table this year, I decided to turn my deficit into a dare and set out to discover something that is comparable, in terms of flavor and comestible compatibility, easy to obtain, and brewed by our native sons and daughters. Following are the byproducts of this harvesting.

One caveat, however: I have previously (and somewhat unwittingly) reviewed several of the beers that could serve as a stand-in for the Flemish habitue. And although I normally prefer to use this space to talk about novelties (or new-to-me’s, at least), I’m willing to risk repeating myself in order to introduce these quality quaffs to those who either have yet to be served or need a second helping. So, here goes. Enjoy!

Sixteen, Avery Brewing Company. This limited-release saison proved to be a great summer brew and would, I imagine, hold up equally well at turkey time. Created in celebration of the brewery’s 16th anniversary, this Belgian-style ale features just enough unique ingredients, including jasmine, peaches, and honey, to make it a stand-out among its peer beers. Pouring out cloudy-blond, with lots of frothy foam, hoppy floral notes, and a nice balance of fruit and spices, it’s surprisingly less sweet than expected, slightly tart and dry, and assertive enough to pair with a range of flavors.

Le Freak, Green Flash Brewing Company. As the name implies, and as I discovered this summer, this is one unusual farmhouse ale. A cross between an Imperial IPA and a Belgian-style tripel, it appears milky-light-brown, with citrus (grapefruit and orange) aromas and a potent whiff of alcohol. The IPA genes contribute some highly hoppy and dry-sweet flavors, while the tripel lineage confers a mix of herbs and spices and lots of carbonation. In August, it got down with a dinner of baked sweet (turkey) sausages and ears of fresh Silver Queen corn, and would no doubt prove tres chic with sliced turkey breast and sweet corn pudding.

Biere de Mars, Brewery Ommegang. As I predicted I might in my review, I’m definitely going to place this beer front and center on my Turkey Day table. Similar to a biere de garde (and, brewed in Cooperstown, N.Y., the closest thing to an all-American I could find), this more robust amber ale pours out in an orange hue, with lots of spice and citrus notes, and a tart, dry, and, well, funky taste due to a key ingredient: Brettanomyces bruxellensis, or “Brett,” a wild yeast used in secondary fermentation. This late-stage infusion apparently imparts a fruity, peppery, musty bite that, like a dry Chardonnay, will kick-start your tastebuds between forkfuls for an “out of this world” experience.

Saison Athene, Saint Somewhere Brewing Company. It seems fitting that this medium-bodied ale, brewed in Sarasota, Fla., is one of the most citrusy saisons (with pronounced grapefruit highlights) that I’ve ever opened. It’s also one of the sweetest. Both are qualities that I think make it an ideal partner for a meal that includes a variety of lighter-flavored ingredients, such as cranberry sauce (especially if it includes orange peel, the way my grandmother made it), and squash, turnips, and sweet potatoes. It is just dry and sour enough, too, that I’d bet it would do the Schuhplattler with a side of sauerkraut, which is a Maryland must-have.

La Merle, North Coast Brewing Company. Here’s another farmhouse ale that, with its golden complexion, racy carbonation, and earthy, yeasty-biscuity flavors, would serve as a refreshing and versatile table-mate for Tom and all the fixings. Last week I tried it with pork chops baked with apples and acorn squash and discovered that, because the fruity aromas and hops bitterness are less dramatic and more understated here than with other saisons, the spice notes are more noticeable and draw out the sweet and herbal qualities inherent in such a piquant meal. Gobble, gobble!

Coup de Boule, The Brewer’s Art. This is a traditional Belgian dark ale spiced with cardamom, cinnamon, and saffron that pours out coppery gold with a lively head of aromatic foam. It’s mildly spicy, with hints of lemon and malty sweetness, and a taste that reminds me of an apple pie. Seems appropriate, doesn’t it? Moreover, because dark ales are considered a good pairing for game-based dishes, I thought this relatively new brew from the Baltimore-based (and Esquire‘s favorite) brewpub would be a strong choice for those who favor dark meat and hearty stuffing — like the kind my mom makes, with apples, raisins, and sausage. And, oh yeah, save a little for dessert, too.

Other American-made French-style beers that I’ve read about, figured would be ideal, but couldn’t find on the shelf in time for this posting include Fluxus (Allagash Brewing Company), an ale fermented with sweet potatoes and black pepper — is there a better-sounding second-best beer for the Thanksgiving meal? — Fuego del Otono, or “Autumn Fire” (Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales), an amber ale and one of the few bieres de gardes to be released in the fall, and Garde Dog (Flying Dog Brewing Company), a conventional biere de garde from an unconventional brewery.

I’d also recommend the Pecan Harvest Ale from Abita. Although I’m not a fan of the ubiquitous, often uniformly flavored “autumn ales” that seem to be growing in popularity among brewers, I was intrigued by the possibility of this one, and enjoyed it with a slice of fresh shoofly pie. Mildly flavorful, dry rather than sweet, and slightly nutty, I imagine it’s cracking good paired with its eponymous pastry.

So, there you have it, a selection of six-plus native stand-ins that, though not quite achieving la perfection, nonetheless will squash your desire to serve grape-flavored libations at the dinner table this holiday — and that’s something for which your guests will be thankful. But keep the wine glasses out — you’ll enjoy the beer better if you don’t drink it straight from the bottle.

As always, talk turkey here and tell us what you think. Have you tasted any of these beers? Are there other American-made bieres de gardes, or different beer styles altogether, that you prefer to serve with your Thanksgiving meal? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

And be sure to visit (and join) the Scribbleskiff page on Facebook (find it here), where you can partake in wall-to-wall conversations, find additional information and suggestions from readers, and more.

Originally posted on November 24, 2009.

Hayden Carruth, an accomplished, award-winning writer whose genre-hopping career produced two dozen or more books of poetry, a novel, several books of criticism and essays, an autobiography, a memoir, and a popular anthology, died on September 29, at the age of 87, after a series of strokes. To me, he was more than just a fine and famous writer; he was also a teacher, a sometime correspondent, a full-time mentor, and a friend.

Since his death a week ago, much has been written about him already (in print and online, here and here and here and here), discussing the virtues and value of his writing, his awards and accolades, the exegeses of his personal life that contributed to his development, etc. So I won’t attempt to recapitulate or explicate things further here. Instead, I want to share some personal reminiscences and offer a little insight into what it was about him and his books that drew me in, allowing me find what I needed, and kept me coming back, wanting more.

Of course, what I want most now is one more chance to connect with him — to write to him, perhaps, in the hope of getting another newsy letter or even a postcard in return, or spending a few more moments visiting with him. The last time I saw him in person was at an 80th birthday celebration that took place in New York City, just a few short weeks after the tragedy there. The event, held at the Cooper Union, was billed as a reading, but it was clearly much more — a gathering of friends and worshippers, a live Festschrift of poets reminiscing, telling tales, occasionally reading poems, and laughing. The most delightful part of the night occurred when it was Carruth’s turn to take the stage and he admitted that, because he was now so old, he didn’t remember most of the poems his friends had read, and he had forgotten the poems he had brought to read. So he had to wing it, and eventually picked something at random from a book borrowed from Galway Kinnell, who was seated behind him.

At first, it was an awkward moment; everyone, I think, felt badly for him, watching him shuffle back and forth to the podium, fumbling for his reading material, hampered by bad lighting and trailing an oxygen tube earned after nearly a lifetime of stubbornly refusing to stop “smoking like a chimney in Gary, Indiana.” Yet it was a fitting moment, typical of him, really. He immediately cracked a joke or said something self-deprecating, and set everyone at ease. He feared readings and suchlike public events, as has been well chronicled elsewhere. I’d like to think that he thought it was we who were acting foolishly, standing there in the auditorium, clapping for him, and he was going to make us feel more comfortable.

From my experience, and judging by what others have said or written about him, he had a gift for befriending people and making them feel welcome. For instance, he recognized me right away, when I approached him on the stage, sitting there among friends and autograph-seekers after the reading. It was an amazing feat, really, considering the vast number of people he must have known and who claimed to know him — amazing, also, considering it had been at least a half-dozen or more years since the last time I had seen him, after another reading, this time in Washington, D.C. (That reading and subsequent trip home turned out to be the subject of and genesis for his humorous, touching poem, “In Georgetown.”) Of course, neither event allowed for “a proper visit,” as he later said to me in a letter. I would love to have another chance for arranging that.

One visit together that I would love to revisit and alter was one of our first. Carruth was the visiting poet when I was a sophomore at Bucknell University. I was a member of a fraternity that often invited guests over for dinner. So, tired of the usual invitees — econ profs, administrators, coaches, or other college figureheads whose ass the members were trying to kiss — I decided to invite someone interesting, a poet, for instance — someone, in fact, whose ass I was trying to kiss. I guess I should have done my homework first, or certainly should have known better, knowing that I hadn’t done my homework. During the pre-dinner cocktail gathering in the living room, while we were discussing poetry matters, I offered him a beer, which flowed freely from the basement bar taps then. He said to me, in front of a group of friends and several upperclassmen (whose ass I was trying to kiss, as well), “I can’t.” But this is a frat house, I said, of course you can. “No,” he politely reiterated, “I can’t. I’m an alcoholic.” Awkward? (You think?) Certainly not one of my better moves, for sure. But, as always, he was a good sport, kept right on talking, and the moment quickly passed. Fortunately, one of the members caught wind of the situation and made me chug the requisite beer during the dinnertime Q&A ritual that was usually reserved for the lucky guest.

Another moment I would like to recover involved a half-assed term paper I turned into him at the end of that year. Thinking that, because I was a good student in his class and that we had established a rapport, I decided to focus my energy on studying for a history final for a class I was struggling in. I was spared hearing his disappointment in person, because he left the school before the semester had ended, for personal reasons (a series of events leading to a devastating mental breakdown that, as it turned out, later nearly cost him his life). Instead, I read his dispirited appraisal in a very terse letter I received shortly after I got home, along with the paper that he returned unmarked because it was so lousy. I am sure the “C” I got was a gift.

Luckily, he never wrote me off for that gaff. In fact, he almost immediately wrote a very generous letter of recommendation for me to an elite poetry seminar for which I doubt I was qualified to attend but proved (as I would like to think he knew) invaluable to my growth as a writer. He also generously and diligently wrote me letters, which I have kept and reread often. His letters were full of anecdotes and useful advice (usually in a chiding, avuncular tone), on a wide range of topics. For instance, when I announced to him the birth of my first child and stated how I looked forward to her asking for advice, he corrected me. “You are wrong,” he wrote, “what she will ask you for is money.” On another occasion, despite my pleading, he refused to prescribe a reading list for my post-college education and told me instead to follow my nose and “let one book lead to another.” I did, eventually, and it lead me to books and writers I may not have discovered had I allowed myself to be directed by him or others like him — of course, it occasionally lead me back to him, as well.

I think that is what I will miss most  — the camaraderie, affection, and support he offered in his letters. The key attributes of any true correspondence, really, and something that is sorely missing from most e-mail “exchanges” these days. Carruth’s letters were amazing. He wrote openly about his life, for instance sharing his feelings toward and eventual marriage to his fourth wife, Joe-Anne, or reporting on his (seemingly always) failing health, along with the illnesses suffered by his friends and family members. His letters were packed tightly with details, from the vivid descriptions of the changing seasons in Upstate New York, where he lived, to the myriad comings and goings of friends and relations, to the heavy strain on his writing caused by the numerous tasks he faced — books and manuscripts to review, contests to judge, readings to attend, etc. (Even his faithful, voluminous correspondence occasionally suffered: in 1989, I received a form letter addressed “Dear Friends,” explaining that he was so busy he was forced to scale back his superhuman pace of writing “1200 to 1300 letters annually” to “the minimum of essential business for the next few months”; of course, he added a personal, handwritten note at the bottom — he couldn’t help himself — and I got another letter from him less than two months later.) And, without fail, he answered all the (tedious, I’m sure) questions I posed to him, and he unselfishly commented on every poem I included. He was very thorough in his observations: speaking encouragingly when he liked what he had read, and constructive in his criticism of passages or phrasings he did not care for, often citing specific words that weren’t working or suggesting different line lengths, rhythms, or rhymes.

The last time we corresponded was via email, as it turned out; he had finally succumbed to the technology, after having been, as he put it, “inundated with email by assholes” for several years. I sent him a greeting on his 85th birthday, and he responded with surprise and delight that I was the only person to contact him on the actual day — “You’re a peach!” he wrote, and gabbled a bit about the “lovely cake,” visits with friends and his son, and the gifts he had received, particularly a restored 19th century cane-backed rocking chair his wife gave him (“and we all sang ‘Old Rocking Chair’ after Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden,” he wrote). We exchanged pleasantries over the next week or so, about the state of the weather (“too damned hot”), family member whereabouts, workloads, etc. And he admitted, rather too fatalistically I thought at the time, that the new poems in his then-recently published book, Toward the Distant Islands, would be “the last of Carruth.” How prophetic that proved to be.

I don’t know why I didn’t contact him again after that — too many excuses were more convenient, I suppose. I certainly wish I had one more chance to do so. (Isn’t it funny that I need him most now — to console me about him — when it’s impossible for me to reach him?) I am eager to tell him about my new ventures, this silly blog, for one, and the fact that I have set out to earn a living on my own terms, something I think he would have approved of. He wrote repeatedly of the need to recover “the independence of mind, spirit, and … moxie of our great forebears.” So typical of the Yankee commonsense advice he tirelessly offered, something that I think all of us could stand to hear.

So, what remains? If you have never heard of Carruth (and I fear that’s the case for most everyone reading this), a good place to start is Copper Canyon Press, which has been his faithful and magnanimous publisher for more than 15 years. All of the books he wrote for them are still in print, available for purchase here, and perhaps the one that offers the best introduction is Toward the Distant Islands, the “portable Carruth” lovingly compiled by his longtime friend Sam Hamill. And, if you want to experience Carruth at the height of his epistolary prowess, pick up a copy of Letters to Jane (Ausable Press), a collection of intelligent, compassionate, and often hilarious letters he wrote to the poet Jane Kenyon, who was dying of cancer, in an attempt to hand-hold and distract her. It is charming and moving, and you won’t want it to end even though, from the outset, you know how it will.

For an example of the kind of poems Carruth wrote, and the way he would read and discuss them in public, here is a clip of him reading “Ray,” an elegy for his friend, the writer Raymond Carver. It’s a favorite of mine and, considering this reading was likely one of his last, could serve as a fitting tribute to Hayden Carruth, as well. You can also hear him reading on Copper Canyon’s finely tuned collection, “Hayden Carruth: A Listener’s Guide,” available on CD here.

Finally, in going through the letters again in preparation for writing this, I came across something that Carruth had sent me 20 years ago, a hand-printed card containing one of his poems and an illustration. Although he did not “much like what these people did with, to, my little haiku, but it makes a free card,” as he noted, characteristically tempering his criticism with optimism, it seems to sum up my feelings for him:

You from far away,
traveler, why did you come
here? To this place? Here?

Why indeed. Who knows? I certainly don’t. But I am grateful that he did.

Originally posted on October 7, 2008.

In other words, we honor and participate in just about every traditional fanfaronade that pops up on the calendar. No matter what religious or cultural affiliations are ascribed to it, as long as there is food and drink associated with it, we like to be a part of the action. We eat rice and beans during Mardi Gras, for instance (and pancakes for dinner on Shrove Tuesday), as well as corned beef and cabbage for St. Patty’s Day, tacos on Cinco de Mayo, baguettes on Bastille Day, bratwurst and sauerkraut for Oktoberfest, and so on.

Chinese New Year, which began today, is no exception. And because we are kitchen-table enthusiasts, not anthropologists, we don’t maintain particularly exacting standards. We’re pretenders, after all, so adhering to authenticity would seem, well, unseemly: rather, we simply act like tourists and order take-out from the local restaurant. However, we do take an interest in the rituals of the Spring Festival, as it is also called. For instance, we like to discuss the significance of the current cycle of the zodiac, and which of the 12 animal signs each of us falls under and how compatible we are to each other. (In our little menagerie we have, in descending order, a snake, a rooster, a pig, a tiger, and a horse.) And over the past decade or so, each of my three kids has taken a turn instructing the rest of us on what she or he has learned about the holiday in school — sayings and greetings, stories, poems, and the like.

What makes this fete slightly trickier to pull off than some others (and I’m not even counting sewing the dragon costume and the lion dance I do) is the fact that Chinese food can be hard to pair with good drink. There is often a wide range of flavors among the dishes, and they don’t always complement each other. At least not at our table: we have figured out what everybody likes and we usually order the same dishes, to keep the peace among the differing palates and temperaments in the house. Our list of usuals includes moo shu vegetable, orange chicken, Szechuan beef, and pork with spicy black bean sauce, along with pork-fried rice, some Spring rolls, and an order of steamed dumplings (for good luck). Not exactly feng-shui perfection, but certainly a tasty combination.

So, what do you pour into a glass that will not compete with or foil the already dueling flavors? The natural (and safe) choice is one of the popular beers brewed in China and Asia, like Tsingtao or Kirin. These beers, generally pilsners, are certainly more satisfying than a glass of water but have relatively little flavor, compared with the food, and so tend to play a supporting role. And that’s OK. They work in a pinch and are vastly better than red wine, which always wants to lead aggressively in the tango of tastes and has a single-minded, showy, fruity demeanor — it’s made from grapes, remember — or white wine, which unless you are eating something citrusy, like lemon chicken, can literally sour your taste buds. The other advantage of beer over wine is the carbonation: it acts as a palate cleanser, literally lifting away the fatty oils, carbs, and heavy flavors, while readying your tongue with scrubbing bubbles in time for the next bite. You can’t get that kind of service from a Cabernet, no matter the pedigree.

But this time around, because it is a New Year’s celebration, I want something more distinctive and special and, well, celebratory. So I consulted the teachings of the Master — the brewmaster, that is. I pulled out my copy of The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food, by Garrett Oliver, which is the Tao Te Ching of beer-food handbooks. Not only does Oliver’s tome contain lots of great beer facts and lore, along with a comprehensive history and description of all the major styles of beers and who brews them, etc., but (and this is the key ingredient, the third eye of enlightenment, if you will) the book also exactingly and deliciously suggests the proper foods to pair with them.

Surprisingly, Oliver, who is brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery, recommends serving German beer with Chinese food — Bavarian weissbier, or wheat beer, in particular: “The volcanic carbonation will break up those cornstarch-based sauces and let you really taste the food, while the malt sweetness marries into the dish.” Since he hasn’t steered me wrong yet — as Confucius says, “when internal examination discovers nothing wrong, what is there to fear? It’s just beer” (I’m paraphrasing here) — I decided to give it a try. So I dropped by my favorite rathskeller, said “kung hei fat choy!” to my favorite salesperson, who (after giving me a confused look) helped me pick out a half-dozen or so Bavarian beers to try. He also suggested a few domestics and one surprising German-style weizen brewed by an Asian neighbor.

Then I gathered the family together, spread out a few dishes on the table, curiously cracked open each of the bottles, like fortune cookies, and had a little taste-test while we ate our way into the Chinese New Year.

Schneider Weisse, G. Schneider & Sohn. The first thing I noticed about this unusual beer was an earthy, ruddy color that grew intriguingly cloudy as it filled the glass. The carbonation was also a bit more athletic than expected, but its complex, fruity bouquet told me right away that, “ja!” it was a wheat beer. The style’s trademark sweet, caramelized malt flavor and an almost bubble-gum-like tanginess emerged when mixed with the orange chicken and the pork-fried rice. And its tart, slightly acidic finish helped tame the Szechuan beef and other spicy foods.

Erdinger Hefe-weizen, Erdinger Weissbrau. We found that this more traditional, popular wheat beer (the label says “hefe-weizen,” which is another term for weissbier), with its pale orange glow and billowy head, delivered delicate flavors that paired well with the lighter foods but were almost too mild for the rest. For instance, the muted malt flavors and hints of fruit, especially apple, though quite refreshing and enhancing to the pork-fried rice and orange chicken, were easily overwhelmed by the stronger flavors.

Ayinger Ur-Weisse, Ayinger Brauerei Inselkammer. With “ur” in the name, meaning “original,” it’s hard to deny this was the best all-around beer in the bunch. It’s a dunkel, or dark beer, with an amber hue and sweet, toffee texture that is matched by clove and fruity (banana?) undertones. As such it was especially tasty with both pork dishes and was the perfect counterpart for anything spicy — it embraced the biting raciness, soothed it with malty caramel goodness, and washed it away in a light foam.

Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse, Spaten-Franziskaner-Brau. Also a dunkel, this beer showed less malty sweetness upfront, compared with the Ayinger. It was milder, too, with a slightly more bitter, drier finish. But with enjoyably subtle caramelized sugar and coffee notes, it was an agreeable match for the lighter fare and melded especially well with the smoky mushrooms in the moo shu vegetable.

Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier, Brauerei Heller-Trum. Although the label reads “marzen,” your nose wouldn’t know that this rauchbier, or smoked beer, was cousin to an Oktoberfest. In fact, from the moment I popped the cap, an overwhelming aroma of burning embers puffed out of the bottle like a chimney. But once the smokiness subsided a bit, by the second swig or so, the familiar, sweet Bavarian maltiness made its way to the surface. And the more I sipped, the more I liked this mellow little tinder-beer, especially in concert with the smoky flavors of the black bean and duck sauces, and it coaxed a faint suggestion of a wood-fired grill out of the chunks of pork in the rice. I bet it would be even juicier with barbecue spareribs.

Smoked Porter, Stone Brewing Co. Unlike its rauchbier counterpart, this domestic variant showed greater balance between the malty and smoky flavors, and it was drier and breadier, too, as a porter should be. So it seemed to pair well with most of the menu items, at first. However, it displayed a silky, chocolate-like roastiness that was more delicate than the muscular, malty sweetness of the marzen and allowed it to be overpowered by the high-kicking spices and pushy starches. I saved some for dessert and sipped it later, with a fortune cookie.

Golden Monkey, Victory Brewing Co. When I want a flavorful American beer that will act as an ambassador and improve relations with my Chinese food, this is my go-to brew. Technically a Belgian-style tripel, the natural orange flavors and spicy overtones of this bottle-conditioned pale beer made it seem right at home with the Germans. And though it mixed well with similarly flavored dishes, like orange chicken or the sweet pork-fried rice, this delightfully hoppy beer, with its full body, lively carbonation, and dry finish, also mingled nimbly with the other dishes, too.

Hitachino Nest Weizen, Kiuchi Brewery. I have to admit that it was partly the cutesy cartoon owl on the label that caught my attention. I mean, come on, who doesn’t like a little anime now and then? I also thought that, because it was brewed in Japan, there might be a neighborliness to the brew that suited Asian cuisine. Instead, this beer quickly proved as annoying as an episode of Pokemon — overly sweet, with a winy, sourly cloying aftertaste. In fact, other than battling valiantly with the very spicy dishes, this weizen went down like a bottle of Sweetarts.

According to custom, the Chinese people believe they should enter a new year by dropping the old one “into the silent limbo of the past” by cleaning house, painting doors, buying new clothes, or even getting a new haircut. That seems like a fitting way to put the troubles of the last 12 months behind us, especially when you consider that we have just begun the Year of the Rooster, a period supposedly characterized by fresh challenges requiring quick wit and practical solutions.

So here’s my advice to you: clean your kitchen, invite friends and family over, order some Chinese take-out (be sure to over-tip the delivery person), pop open a bottle of weissbier, and shout “auf wiedersehen 2016!”

As always, tell us what you think. Do you have any words of wisdom for the rest of us? Are there books, beers or bands that inspire you during this celebratory time of year? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

In other words, dear reader, Scribbleskiff is at a loss for words this week. I’ve been so busy again, getting caught up in the rigmarole of regular life, managing (and being managed by) the important things, that I’ve been unable to get carried away by useless things. When that happens, I turn to other people’s words for inspiration and sustenance.

And what’s kept me going recently? A regular dose of “Daily Issa,” for one thing. Here are a few of his recent, ancient, timely bons mots that I’ve thumbtacked to the bulletin-board:

a bird making a nest
a temple being built…
when will they finish?

…

on the ancestors’ altar
without fail
a lucky wind blows

…

in the next life
don’t be a snake!
temple grounds

…

upon writing a note
of apology, ice
in my ink-stone

And here’s a shard of a gem by Olav H. Hauge, a new-to-me Norwegian poet whose collection, The Dream We Carry, was published by my favorite press, Copper Canyon:

There’s so much to think about here in this world,
one life’s not enough.
After work you can roast pork
and read Chinese poetry.

As Hauge once wrote, “A good poem should smell of tea. Or of raw earth and freshly cut wood.” Hauge offers words to live by, and poems you want to live with every day.

I’ve also been nibbling on some local, home-cooked verse by Steve Ward, the quieter half of the Ward Brothers, legendary decoy carvers. Though known in his hometown as “The Bard of Crisfield,” most of Ward’s poems were never published widely or even collected until now, under the cover of Closed for Business, which my dad gave me for Christmas. This finely carved, touching, little epigraph, in fact, was found written on the bottom of a Canvasback decoy:

The Record I Keep

It isn’t so much what my
neighbor may think
Though I value his friendship a lot.
It isn’t some record they’ve
Written in ink
That I want to keep free
From the blot.
It isn’t some tale people whisper
About the way I gather myself.
I want to keep evil and crookedness
Out of the record
I keep for myself.

And, for a little levity, I’ve been nosing through Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School, which I picked up in the gift shop at Independence Hall last month, on a 5th grade field trip with Will. It’s full of funny, often bawdy bits of Franklin’s wit — including satirical essays, phony letters, cartoons, aphorisms, drinking songs, poems, etc. — much of it not worth a “FARThing,” as he stated, during his lifetime, but all of it worth reading and repeating. Like this pungent apothegm from Poor Richard’s Almanack:

He that is conscious of
A Stink in his Breeches,
is jealous of every Wrinkle
in another’s Nose.

I think I’ll let that be the final word, on this the penultimate day of the year. It’s been a gas, for sure. I’m looking forward to seeing your wrinkling noses poking around here next year.

As always, tell us what you think. Do you have any words of wisdom for the rest of us? Are there books or authors that inspire you during this hectic time of year? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

And be sure to visit (and join) the Scribbleskiff page on Facebook (find it here), where you can partake in wall-to-wall conversations, find additional information and suggestions from readers, and more.

Originally posted on 12/30/2009.

Anyway, that seems to be the leading sentiment in this “Land of the Loss” in which we are currently living. These days there’s a certain cachet or majesty to being a washout and a disappointment. Even if for a brief (and shining) moment. Need proof? Just turn on the TV: The hit show “The Biggest Loser,” for instance, just began its eighth season, and TV personalities like Dave Letterman continue to line up to proclaim (hand on forehead, palm out), “Help, I’ve fallen and I can get up.” Laughing all the way to the bank, of course.

But I’m willing to go a step further and state that, sometimes, achieving failure is its own reward. In fact, I think failure with foreknowledge, or self-consent, or malice aforethought, or whatever you want to call it, elicits a grander satisfaction than unintentionally screwing up. In other words, failing, when you knew damn well you would do so, can feel really good. And here I will offer myself as an example.

Last fall, shortly after I learned that poet and critic Hayden Carruth, my old friend and mentor, had died, I set out to read all of his books in a single year. I had promised myself a long time ago that I would do this thing, put my hands on all his collections of poems and essays, his novels, and memoirs, and then read the entire lot. And I was going to finish before the one-year anniversary of his death. It would be my way of mourning and paying tribute to him, of repaying his patient generosity and good counsel over the past two decades. It sounded like a good plan, in any event.

And yet, from the moment I decided to tackle this project, I knew I’d fail — and fail miserably. There just aren’t enough hours in my day to allow for such an undertaking, I told myself, and I have too many other obligations, projects, and promises to keep already. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, as King Grover says. But what else was I going to do? What else could I do? I had to try.

So, I did. And, as I knew I would, I didn’t. Out of his 40-plus published books, I think I reread five from cover to cover. I think. I know I nosed into nearly all that I have on my shelf, which number around 15. I even ordered one or two new-to-me’s, though I finished neither of them. My plan also had included checking out the remainder from the library. But when I realized the difficulty in locating even a few (many of his books are out of print), I gave up that endeavor entirely.

As I said, it was a bust, all the way round.

However, I am here to exclaim that, at the bottom of my year-long bookish botch-up, I am feeling neither defeated nor deflated. Quite the opposite — I’m elated. Although I missed reaching my goal, my utterly unattainable goal, I’m nonetheless pleased. Why? Well, for one thing, I did achieve some measure of success — I knew ahead of time that I couldn’t and wouldn’t do it, and I didn’t. That’s something, right?

For another, the pressure’s off. Now that I’ve realized and acknowledged my underachievement, I can move on. A better man might not feel this way, but who am I kidding? At least now I can go back to rereading the books I didn’t get to — for example, Beside the Shadblow Tree, Carruth’s touching memoir of his friendship with publisher and poet James Laughlin, or Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey, the prize-winning book that includes several of his most wrenching, elegiac poems, such as “Testament” — and I won’t feel a bit guilty about it. In fact, my plan now is to reread his books — as many or as few as I can, that is — every year.

Which brings me to the other, bigger reason for feeling like such a delighted dud. Taking on this task not only reawakened the sublime joy I feel when encountering my friend’s words and thoughts, but it also stoked my enjoyment of the act of rereading itself.

Few people I know are active rereaders. And why should they be? It’s hard enough to make time for reading a book one time through these days, let alone to make a second or third attempt. Will we watch a rerun of “House” or “Desperate Housewives”? Maybe. But slog through Bleak House or House Made of Dawn again? Not so much. I am not passing judgment here. It’s just the way it is.

Now, I am an editor and writer by trade, which really means I am, by and large, a professional reader. And being a reader-for-hire inevitably means that I am called on to go back over some word or paragraph or entire manuscript that I’ve already read once (or, more likely several times). So it’s what I do and I’m used to doing it. Luckily, though, I like being a rereader.

Frankly, it’s part of my make-up. Perhaps it’s my inquisitive nature, or an innate inability to stay focused on one thing for too long (I think there’s a name for this dis-order), or a natural inclination to hopscotch from one thought (or book or song or Web site) to the next. In other words, my name is Scribbleskiff and I’m easily distracted — especially by something shiny and familiar.

A good example of this behavior occurred recently. While I was still faithfully (blindly and frantically, at this point) engaged in my quest to reread the Carruth canon, I stumbled upon a new poem by Donald Hall, an author I have admired for many years (and, not coincidentally, someone Carruth had recommended to me). Hall, who’s in his early 80s, hasn’t published much lately, so a new poem is a rare find. And, as it turns out, “Meatloaf”, which appeared in The New Yorker this summer, is even rarer — it’s a reprise of “Baseball,” a long poem he published more than 15 years ago in The Museum of Clear Ideas, a book I relished and still think about, but hadn’t opened in a long time. (You do see where I’m going with this, don’t you?) Naturally, I began rereading it, too.

I recommend The Museum of Clear Ideas to you, dear reader, because it proved influential to me, though I’m not sure I knew why in 1994. I especially admired the book’s title sequence, which is an homage of sorts to the Latin poet Horace (not unlike Ezra Pound’s controversial Homage to Sextus Propertius), though the main speaker is actually Horace Horsecollar, a minor character in early Disney cartoons. I was reading a lot of Latin poets then (still am, actually) and Hall’s recasting of ancient odes and themes into modern situations was inspiring.

I also liked “Baseball,” but for reasons that are less obvious. In the poem, which features nine sections of nine stanzas, each with nine lines of nine syllables (it’s a form Hall says he invented to aid in composition), the speaker (who calls himself “K.C.” or Casey) sets out to explain America’s pastime to Kurt Schwitters, a 20th century German Dada collage artist. I don’t care much for baseball, so the theme didn’t overly matter to me. However, Hall’s decision to incorporate elements of collage, juxtaposing and “gluing/ bits and pieces of world/ history alongside personal anecdote,” did.

This approach, making connections between seemingly disjointed and unconnected elements, was fascinating to my scatterbrain mindset. And it’s likely what caused me years later to pick up a copy of Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara, whose brief, wild, conversational “I do this, I do that” poems inspired me to write a long series of “proems” (as I called them), which I worked on almost daily, off and on, for more than two years.

It’s only after having been away from Hall’s old poems for awhile, and encountering them again through the wondrous and delicious “Meatloaf,” do I realize what an impact they made. That’s how memory works, doesn’t it, leading us from thought to thought, with images and emotions running together, inexplicably making connections, without purpose or meaning, or so it seems.

In the end, then, rereading has some important benefits. For one thing, it enables you to reconnect with a writer or writers and uncover hidden or forgotten nuances and delights. And you can discover favorite authors at an earlier, less mature stage in their careers — for instance, while again thumbing through Carruth’s novel and first book, Appendix A, I glimpsed a writer just beginning to find the assured and impassioned voice that would emerge later and that I would come to admire. Rereading, then, can bring you back to where you started and set you off on new pathways, too.

Rereading also let’s you reconnect with your former self, often in unexpected ways. Upon opening The Sleeping Beauty, Carruth’s magnum opus, I was immediately transported back to where I was when I bought my copy, a first edition — in London, mid ’80s, wandering the used bookstalls off The Strand with some dear friends, on a lark, killing time, with nothing better to do. (Where have those days gone?) I remembered realizing that, though I couldn’t afford it, I had to buy that book and send it to Hayden to autograph, which he did — along with a characteristically apt comment that the damage on the spine looked like “someone had used it as a hammer to drive in nails.” It’s a rare first read that can elicit that kind of response.

Of course, I have no right to follow my rereading impulses, no matter who the author is. I have a large and growing stack of unread books that occupies more than a few tabletops in my house. (It’s a singular stack in my mind because all of its contents are categorized under one theme — “unopened.”) Let’s not even count the volumes interspersed throughout my bookshelves, the books that I’ve started then put back with high hopes of completion “some day.” Even frivolouser than being a rereader, it turns out, is being a buyer of books that don’t get read. Ah, so.

Recently a friend, glancing at several tomes held in my hand, asked how I come to find the books I read and write about. “I follow my nose,” I said, and I wasn’t being glib. Like a trained truffle-snuffler, I meander from one scent to another, often leaving a trail in favor of something stronger or more interesting, sometimes circling back to pick up an old scent again, until it goes cold once more. And so on, and so on, as the Faberge girls would say.

I don’t always find what I’m looking for in this manner, and that’s OK because sometimes I find exactly what I wasn’t looking for. In either case, such a calculated misstep is for me a delight that I hope, once I get back up, I never learn to correct.

As always, let us know what you think. Are you a habitual rereader? If so, what book or books do you revisit? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

And be sure to visit (and join) the Scribbleskiff page on Facebook (find it here), where you can partake in wall-to-wall conversations, find additional information and suggestions from readers, and more.

Originally posted on October 7, 2009.

So why am I thinking (and talking) about the beauty of nature in the dead of winter? Blame Bill McKibben. You see, several years (OK, decades!) ago, I read his book The End of Nature, which was published in 1989, during this country’s last great frog-leap forward in the attempt to prove how important (and easy) it is “being green” (remember the pandering 50 Simple Things You Can Do… book?). Although the thrust of McKibben’s argument was simple — that the survival of the planet “is dependent on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature” — his doomsday catalog of manmade cataclysms, like global warming, acid rain, deforestation, etc., simply scared the crap out of me. And not in the way he intended, I’m sure. Statements like this one — “in 1988—for perhaps the first time since that starved Pilgrim winter at Plymouth—America ate more food than it grew” — turned me from activism to skepticism and inaction.

Perhaps I wasn’t the only one to react this way, because one scare hasn’t been enough for the unnerving Mr. M. He has been banging his gong of gloom pretty steadily for 20-odd years and more than a dozen books, and he was back in the spotlight again this fall with another shocker, the unsettlingly titled Eaarth. I didn’t have the stomach to read it. (You can find out more about McKibben, his books, and his prophecies at his Web site here. Enter at your own risk.)

But re-confronting his Morrisonian concept of “the end” did inspire me to wonder about the affect that the natural world has had on my life, in big and little ways. For instance, if I just take the time to notice its existence — some days literally forcing myself to stop and smell the roses (or dahlias or cherry blossoms, etc.) or to pause and photograph a maple tree in full autumnal luster — I realize how unpleasant life would be without the cosmos. Oh, and unlivable, of course.

Luckily, nature didn’t quite end, not in the ways McKibben predicted, not yet. In fact, it’s fairly thriving, at least in my little corner of Earth (just one “a,” thanks), and in the minds of many of the writers I read these days, especially (though not surprisingly) the poets. Several of my favorite books of the past year offered a unique perspective on “the way we relate to nature,” and vice-versa. If nothing else, they remind us that the natural world has an important role in our lives: as a renewable source of inspiration.

As part of Scribbleskiff’s “year-end wrap-up for holiday wrapping” series, here is an overview of five of our favorite books of poetry published in 2010. Enjoy!

In Search of Small Gods, Jim Harrison (Copper Canyon Press). Not only is this my favorite book of the year, but it is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, poetry or otherwise. High praise or hyperbole? Yes. Harrison, who is perhaps best known as a novelist — he wrote Legends of the Fall and Julip— also is an accomplished and highly readable poet. His writing style is unadorned and straightforward, as are his sensibilities: “What could it be, this astonishment / … to finally understand that the purpose / of earth is earth?” And so is his sense of humor:

If a peregrine sees fifty times better
than we, what do we look like to them?
Unanswerable.

To Harrison, nature and the natural objects that comprise it (the “small gods” in the book’s title) aren’t something to fear or protect. Nature is simply a part of everyday living, important and necessary, but intangible and fleeting, like “the fluttering unknown gods that I nearly see / from the left corner of my blind eye, struggling / to stay alive in a world that grinds them underfoot.” Sure, rivers, mountains, and animals — including lots of birds, dogs, deer, even the “lowly stinkbug” he accidentally crushed with the garden gate — play a significant, even spiritual role in his life. But he knows that these are not harbingers or a hypostasis. After all, he states, “nature only leads us to herself.”

What makes In Search of Small Gods such a natural fit for me is the craftsmanship of the language that fills every page. Harrison’s talent is translating the transcendent into earth-bound, yet elegant statements, infused with warmth and wit, from the seemingly pointless (“my heart must open to the cosmos with no language”) to the poignant:

in Montana you can throw yourself down just about anywhere on a green grassy bed, snooze on the riverbank and wake to a yellow-rumped warbler flittering close to your head then sipping a little standing water from a moose track. … [But] first look for hidden rocks. Nothing in nature is exactly suited to us.

Everything about Jim Harrison’s 12th book of poems suits me. And the same holds true with some other 2010 books that I encountered this year:

The Forest of Sure Things, Megan Snyder-Camp (Tupelo Press). With such a confident tone and heartfelt honesty, it’s hard to believe this compact volume is a debut. The Forest of Sure Things offers an eerie, mesmerizing sequence of poems, split between imagined (or “borrowed”) memories of a real-life family tragedy and the poet’s reactions to it, that left me feeling both at home in this seascape where “shipwrecks build houses” and crate-loads of oranges “bob along the coast like subtitles” — and uneasy: “In this land the children tear their hearts in half.”

Bird Lovers, Backyard, Thalia Field (New Directions). It’s difficult to call Field’s new book “poetry” because, traditionally speaking, there are few discernible lines of verse here. Nonetheless, her experimental, genre-blending “stories,” which offer a stylistically daring exploration of our natural (and un-natural) world, are ripe with lyricism: “Until their power over the cities becomes too great, we think the pigeons will be able to continue. Then we think thinking will no longer help them.” This book is an aphrodisiac for word (and nature) lovers.

Child of Nature, Lujeta Lleshanaku (New Directions). Lleshanaku’s stark poems, translated from the Albanian by Henry Israeli and Shpresa Qatipi, plumb the lives of people living in a changed landscape where “spring kills solitude with its solitude.” These are haunting portraits, with their intensity often sparking at the intersection of human nature and nature itself. Here, a widow’s breasts droop “like flowers,” while “soft rain falls like apostrophes / in a conversation between two worlds,” and “praying was considered a weakness/ like making love.”

On Speaking Terms, Connie Wanek (Copper Canyon). Commonplace moments form the outstanding features of the landscape Wanek explores in this third book of poems. The speaker of one poem, for instance, writes a word on “the delicate paper [torn] from a garlic clove,” the result of “a whimsy / that came out of my pores.” In “Scrabble,” the poet admits that a lack of gamesmanship is “the story of my life, / rearranging assets and coming up shor.” Such word-playfulness is refreshing and inspirational, especially during these super-serious times, and feels hopeful, the way each puff of breath on a cold day, she says, might form “a little cloud capable of a single snowflake.”

So there you have it, five new books from this past year that should appeal to the natural instincts of the book-lovers on your list.

As always, tell us what you think. Have you read any of these new releases? Are there others that you think everyone should try? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

And be sure to visit (and join) the Scribbleskiff page on Facebook (find it here), where you can partake in wall-to-wall conversations, find additional information and suggestions from readers, and more.

Originally posted on December 19, 2010.

Another treasured tradition for me at that time of year is revisiting the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Unlike Washington Irving, who used his “sketches” to parody everyday life in places like rural New York, Poe takes a decidedly otherworldly worldview. He makes observations about life from a fantastical, supernatural realm, based in the imagination — “a dimension of sight … of sound … of mind,” as his disciple Rod Serling would later call it. I enjoy his mysterious seriousness and style, and usually pick out a few poems and a story or two to peruse on my own, or read to my children at night before bed, during the week or two leading up to Halloween. Poe puts me in the proper mood for the pending fall festivities and for what may (or may not) lie beyond.

This year, however, I am not going to wait until the arrival of All Hallow’s Eve before I get cracking. Instead, I’m getting a jump on things by reading through my big Complete Tales & Poems (you can buy a copy here) a few months early, in anticipation of another key holiday: January 19, which this year marks Poe’s 200th birthday.

And I’m not the only one planning to raise the celebratory glass of amontillado. The City of Baltimore is hosting “Nevermore 2009,” a yearlong celebration of Poe’s life and works. The organizers have posted an informative Web site (www.nevermore2009.com), full of Poe-related anecdotes and arcanum– everything from brief descriptions of places of interest, to a video of novelist Laura Lippman’s mystery tour of Baltimore. A calendar of events lists goings on in nearly every month, including a tribute to Poe by actor John Astin (aka, “Gomez Addams”), who recites passages from EAP’s works and comments on the author’s life, as well as lectures, wine tastings, art exhibitions, special tours, and theatrical performances.

Baltimoreans have always considered Poe as one of their most famous residents, even though, as they say, “he ain’t from around here.” And the reason why has a certain Poe-etic quality all its own. The “City That Reads” embraces Poe not for his contributions to literacy or because he was born here (he wasn’t, that happened in Boston) or raised here (that happened all over, but mainly in Richmond and abroad), or because he went to college here (nope — the University of Virgina and, for a time, West Point), or lived and worked here (he did that, but very briefly; most of his time was spent in New York). No, Baltimore claims Poe as a favorite son because he died here — and in a bizarre and mysterious way, at that.

According to reports, Poe boarded a boat in Manhattan bound for Baltimore on September 27, 1849, but didn’t resurface again until October 3. And no one, not even Poe (who was delirious and incoherent when finally found), could account for his whereabouts during this period or why he was in such a state when discovered by friends at Gunner’s Hall, a public house near the docks in Fell’s Point. Rumors have abounded ever since, including the theory that he was so distraught over his inability to sell his writing, compounded by some failed personal affairs, that he simply drank himself into a state of delusional oblivion. Others speculated that he had been drugged, kidnapped, and beaten by a roving band of Union soldiers — the city had earned its nickname “Mobtown” by then — or had escaped a botched attempt to be shanghaied by sailors, a common conscripting method in the mid 19th century. Nevertheless, Poe never regained consciousness and died on October 7, at the age of 49, from “a weakness of the heart” and “lesions on the brain,” according to the physician’s diagnosis.

Not surprising, tell-tale signs of Poe can be found all over the city. For instance, there are two main landmarks — a five-room house where he lived with his future wife and mother-in-law for about three years, and that now serves as a museum; and Westminster Hall & Burying Ground, a converted Gothic church built over catacombs that serve as his final resting place. The Enoch Pratt Free Library has a collection of personal letters, books, and memorabilia (including a lock of his hair and a piece of wood from his coffin). There is a weather-beaten statue of Poe seated outside the University of Baltimore Law School, which eerily proved to be the last work by the American sculptor Sir Moses Jacob Ezekiel. There are bars named for Poe and his work, such as the recently opened Annabel Lee Tavern, and there once was a funky little pizza joint called the Tell-Tale Hearth, now defunct, where I first encountered sweet potato fries. Even the Baltimore Ravens, the city’s NFL franchise team, get their name from the title of Poe’s most famous poem (and, to connect with the members of the Peanut Gallery, the team’s mascots are named “Edgar,” “Allan,” and “Poe”).

My plan for celebrating Poe’s bicentennial is to read all his works over the course of the year, starting with my favorites among his 120-odd published poems and stories. Then I’ll move onto works I haven’t read in awhile, like “The Black Cat” or “The Gold Bug,” and start on the new-to-me’s. Then I want to grapple with the lesser known works, like his essays and letters. I’ll report back from time to time, as we approach October, the inauspicious month that is bookended by the date of his demise and the holiday for which he seems the rightful patron saint.

For those of you who are new to his works, or are familiar and just need a refresher course, here’s a list of Poe-bourne fictions that I have selected and will begin to work my way through:

“The Raven”: Arguably his best-known work. Although I enjoy reading this poem quietly to myself, often by the flickering light of a jack-o-lantern, it was written to be read aloud, acted out, in fact, as he did for years and years, in front of an audience. Here is John Astin performing (almost speed-reciting) The Raven. Or consider this version, a sort of comic adaptation starring Vincent Price and Peter Lorre (as the titular bird).

“To Helen”: Another one of his better-known verses, and also one of his earliest, this ode (written for both the heroine from classical antiquity — think “loose lips” — and for a young patroness who befriended him in high school) too sounds best when read out loud. It also contains the famous, much anthologized lines, “the glory that was Greece / And the grandeur that was Rome.”

“Lenore”: Poe had a thing for this sonorous name, a variation of Eleanor and Helen, and used it in several pieces, including “The Raven,” the tale of “Eleonora,” and this poem, a paean to tragedy and the early demise of a beautiful young woman — a theme that shows up throughout his fiction (“Ligeia,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” for instance) and in his life: his wife, Virginia, also lived “in feeble health” and “died so young” at age 24.

“The Bells”: This poem, one of the last he wrote but not published until shortly after his death, embodies the literary technique that Poe perfected, onomatopoeia, or the use of a word or a group of words to imitate the sound described. About the only things that don’t rhyme, chime, clink or clang are the commas. Can anyone read all the way through, from “the jingling and the tingling” to “the moaning and the groaning” of “the bells, bells, bells, bells / Bells, bells, bells — ” without suffering some kind of emotional tinnitus? I can’t.

“The Tell-Tale Heart”: This, and the “The Fall of the House of Usher,” were the first works of Poe’s I ever encountered. I had a wonderful, inspirational Keating-like teacher in 7th grade who read to us one day every week by candelabra — shades down, lights out, all of us silent (can any teacher do this anymore?). It was mesmerizing.  To this day, I can’t read this (“true!”)  chilling story of madness (“why will you say that I am mad?”) in any other light.

“The Cask of Amontillado”: A superbly convincing cautionary tale about the dangers of combining carnival, alcohol (especially the love of fine wine), egomania (and maniacs), airway disorders, and revenge. Not that it’s an original conceit that hasn’t been told and retold many times. However, the next time someone challenges your connoisseurship, think twice before heading down into his remote, dank cellar to taste an obscure liquor. It might be the last motley-wearing foolish thing you do.

“Hop-Frog: or, the Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs”: My kids love it when I read this story, which is one of Poe’s creepiest, cruelest, and one of his last. Little doubt that Poe saw himself as the eponymous court jester (so named for his dwarfish deformities), an unappreciated “genius” who eventually tires of the jibes of his joke-loving king and patrons and outwits — and annihilates — his critics and persecutors.

What to read next? I want to tackle several longer pieces that I have never read, including “Al Aaraaf,” a two-part poem that was one of his favorites; “Scenes from ‘Politian,'” which is subtitled “An Unfinished Drama”; and the novella The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. There is also his published criticism, including reviews of the works of major literary figures, like Dickens and Hawthorne, which should be revealing, as well as his celebrated essay, “The Poetic Principle.”

I may also just select some tales at random, perhaps lured by the titles. But, with so many intriguing names to choose from — “To F_______s S. O_______d,” “The Duke De L’Omlette,” “Four Beasts in One–The Homo-Cameleopard,” “The Man Who Was Used Up: A Tale of the Late Bugaboo and Kickapoo Campaign,” “The Colloquy of  Monos and Una,” “Diddling Considered As One of the Exact Sciences,” “Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq., Late Editor of ‘Goosetherumfoodle,'” “Some Words With a Mummy,” and “X-ing a Paragrab,” to name but a few — even that simple strategy could prove challenging. It would certainly be a labor of love.

But don’t take my word for it. Get a copy of Poe’s selected or collected works — there are several good ones on the market — and start digging. If you’re persistent and lucky, you might notice something glowing, dazzling under the floorboards. Keep scratching away and there, amid the wrack and ruin of many weak and mysterious souls, you’ll find beating — here, here! — the heart of a poet. Only this and nothing more? Nevermore.

One more thing: Celebrating the bicentennial of the master of the macabre, only a day before the U.S. presidential inauguration, seems a fitting way to usher out the fall of the house of Bush, don’t you think?

Originally posted on January 13, 2009.

No, the question becomes, what do we read the night before the night before Christmas, to get in the proper holiday mood? And what about the night before that, or any of the other nights during the final week of advent? We have about a dozen or so favorite yuletide books and stories in our collection, and each year during the run-up to the big night I let the three kids choose which ones they want me to read at bedtime. Normally, there’s little debate, until we get close to the end, and then it gets tricky. Each kid has a favorite and, no matter what method I use to make a selection (oldest-to-youngest, pick-a-number, eenie-meanie, etc.), someone’s feelings always get hurt — and that’s a nativity no-no. So this year, with a nod to the recent elections, I put it to a vote. Not surprising, we had a three-way tie. So, rather than disappoint (no doubt there will be plenty of that in the morning), I plan to read each of the nominees. (It’s OK, I think I’ll manage.)

Here’s what I read this year, over the past week or so, in the order chosen by my audience.

Eloise at Christmastime, by Kay Thompson, with drawings by Hilary Knight. We kicked things off with this “classic,” the ideal holiday book to read to a six-year-old, blond-headed, “spirited” girl (there are two in my house: one current and one recovering). Published in 1957, this almost-poem chronicles the escapades of the eponymous girl on Christmas Eve, tempering her trademark manic mischievousness with jingles and trinkles of charm. Oooh, they’ll absolutely love it.

The Christmas Ship, written and illustrated by Dean Morrissey. This whimsical tale shows how selflessness, redemption, and a little magic can help a toymaker win over the heart of a dour mayor (sound familiar, fans of a certain Rankin-Bass production?) and change the fate of a seaside New England town. The illustrations in the book are reminiscent of the light-rich photo-realism of Chris Van Allsburg, whose Polar Express also is a favorite around here this time of year.

The Book of Christmas, edited by Neil Philip and illustrated by Sally Holmes. My sister gave my wife and me this compendium around the time of our wedding, “for continuing old traditions and beginning new ones,” as she inscribed on the frontispiece. And we have followed her suggestion to the letter. It’s a sackful of yuletide classics — such as Hans Christian Anderson’s story “The Little Match Girl,” e.e. cummings’ poem “Little Tree,” and the lyrics to familiar carols and hymns. I especially like reading “Bertie’s Escapade,” by Kenneth Grahame, although I occasionally substitute the cheery, cheeky caroling scene from his book The Wind in the Willows.

The Lump of Coal, written by Lemony Snicket, with drawings by Brett Helquist. This is a new addition to our collection and equally delightfully upsetting as this duo’s other collaboration, the madcap and macabre A Series of Unfortunate Events. What’s more charming than a Christmas story about a lump of coal that wants to be an artist and is hoping for a miracle? Probably lots and lots of other books (see above, for example), but this one’s a keeper, too.

Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree, written and illustrated by Robert Barry. When the title character’s tree in question arrives (“full and fresh and glistening green”), it proves too tall for the parlor. So the butler is called in to chop off the top, thus setting in motion this inventive variation on the idea that less is more, no matter your size or perspective, and that giving, even unintentionally, can be its own reward.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas, written and illustrated by Dr. Seuss. I suspect that most people know this story from the 1966 TV cartoon of the same name, a collaboration between the wascally Chuck Jones and creepy Boris Karloff that inspired, among other things, some unforgettable song lyrics (“you’re a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich, with arsenic sauce”). Nonetheless, the original book, published in the same year as Eloise at Christmastime, is equally remarkable and, I would argue, more impactful in its unadorned simplicity — as my daughter pointed out, the titular fiend “isn’t even green!” How could it be so?

How Murray Saved Christmas, written by Mike Reiss and illustrated by David Catrow. My kids love this offbeat, slightly screwy tale of how Murray Kleiner, owner of Murray K’s Holiday Diner, reluctantly agrees to take the sleigh-ride of his life after Santa is sidelined by a sudden elf-induced mishap. He may not grasp the finer points of the mission (for example, Murray has to bluff his way through the reindeer roll-call: “On, Lipstick! On, Dipstick! On, Pixie and Dixie!”) or fit into the super-sized red suit, but he understands that sometimes a person has to do “good things without a good reason.” Fodder for a Murray Christmas, indeed.

A Child’s Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas. Neither a poem proper nor a fully formed short story, this brief, peripatetic “memoir-a-clef” is little more than a humorous recounting of boyhood memories of some holiday events in a seaside Welsh village from a bygone era. Yet Thomas tells his “tall tales” in three distinct, dreamlike sections, employing rich, lyrical language and many colorful characters, so that all his Christmases come together as one and “roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon,” captivating my crew every year in a way that no other book seems to.

So, there you have it, our suggestions for what to read on the penultimate night of Advent. Any and all of the above are great merry mood-setters and are sure to inspire visions of sugar-plums and other treats as your listeners drift off to sleep in heavenly peace.

Originally posted on December 23, 2008.

Years later, as a parent of young children, I have been known to don a costume or two. One of my favorites was playing Little John with my kids, who, then aged 6 and 4, went dressed as mini Maid Marian and a half-pint Robin Hood. On the other hand, the Hagrid get-up I concocted once to accompany Harry and Hermione was perhaps a little too convincing — that year Halloween night was a muggy 70 or so degrees, and walking around the neighborhood carrying at least one toddler and wearing several layers of clothing, including a heavy woolen coat and full beard, was enough to persuade me to quit getting into the spirit, so to speak.

What I’ve never been a fan of, honestly, is the candy. I liked to get a lot of it — the thrill of the hunt, the mystery of what you will get going house to house with family and friends, that’s certainly as much a part of the fun as being out in the spooky night air. But I never cared much for eating what I hauled in. I’d get home, count out the number of pieces (though I don’t know why), pop one or two in my mouth, and then shove the whole big pillowcaseful under my bed — where it stayed virtually untouched for weeks, in some cases until Easter (another cloying, candy-laced holiday). Some years I suspect I had Easter candy stuffed away until Halloween. You get the picture.

This year, knowing that there will be many sweets in the offing (and I won’t be able to resist sneaking at least a few), and figuring that I will want some kind of adult-strength beverage to accompany my munching, I decided to see what would make the most appealing candy-and-quaff pairing. The logical choice for a spook-tacular drink? Why, pumpkin ale, hard cider, and sweet stout, of course — the bonbons of the fermented-beverage trade. I picked several varieties of each kind and sipped and chewed, contemplating the fusion of flavors, all the while handing out treats to and admiring the dazzling crush of fancifully festooned children parading by.

I started with the ciders, the lighter of the tonics, both in flavor and texture. As my trusted spirits expert, Jed from the Wine Source, told me, the process of cider fermentation and the recipes are as varied as the kinds of apples grown and differ widely from country to country. So, to keep things simple, I chose a mix of bottles from two relatively similar yet far-flung locales: the U.S. and the U.K. I first encountered cider, often drawn from the tap like ales and bitters, when I visited England in the 1980s. Each region had its own varietal, and I tried as many as I could. The draughts from Taunton (in Somerset) stand out as topnotch in my mind, but none was available where I shop. Strongbow (crisp and slightly sweet) also was a favorite, as well as Woodpecker (dry and sweet, like a toffee apple), and luckily both can be had on this side of the pond. Fellow islander, Magners Original, which hails from Tipperary, was not as sweet, more complex and, at 4.5% alcohol, very drinkable. Not surprising, Yankee-made Cider Jack from Middlebury, Vermont, had a bold, juicy quality that was refreshing. Most craftbeer-like, though, was J.K. Scrumpy’s Farmhouse Organic, Flushing, Michigan, which comes unfiltered and naturally fermented in a 22 oz. bottle. It’s labeled “USDA Organic,” contains no sulfites, and tasted the closest to cider fresh from the press. The best pairing for ciders were the fruity-sweet candies, like Starburst and Twizzlers, and (not surprising) the caramel- and toffee-based treats, such as Goetze’s, Milky Ways, and Heath Bars.

Few standards seem to govern the makers of pumpkin ales. I tried several brands, including Wild Goose Pumpkin Patch Ale, Saranac Pumpkin Ale, and Lakefront Pumpkin Lager — all were pretty tasty. But, in terms of defining a typical, balanced “pumpkin” or “spice” flavor, they were all over the map. The Goose’s “special blend of spices” was so well merged that the fragrances quickly dispersed after a few sips, while Saranac’s understated “hints” of cinnamon and vanilla were overpowered by the malt and hops. And, as a lager, though unique, the Lakefront was just too bubbly and grassy to be enticing. Standouts were the Punkin Ale from Dogfish Head and Harvest Moon from Blue Moon: The Dogfish brew tasted so much like the sublime fall dessert which shares its name I could swear there was a slice of pie floating in the bottle; and the Blue Moon is notable more for being standoffish — it was like drinking nutmeg-flavored Coor’s Light, which, in a way, it is (scary). The pumpkin-enhanced beers paired best with the more flavorful candies, like Kit Kats, Butterfingers, or anything with caramel, but the combination of Punkin Ale and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup was downright devilish.

As is the case with any meal-ender, you should save the best for last. And both stouts proved the rule. The label on the Fisherman’s Pumpkin Stout, from Cape Ann Brewing Company, Gloucester, Massachusetts, calls the dark beer’s flavor a “subtle combination,” and that’s exactly how it hits the palate — lightly, with a hint of pumpkin and spices that matches the stout’s hearty, malty sweetness. Equally eerily delicious is Brooklyn Brewery’s Black Chocolate Stout. Like liquid dessert, this drink tastes the way I imagine Wonka’s wondrous chocolate river did (at least before Augustus Gloop fell in, that is): brisk, rich, smooth, and creamy. Just about anything from Hershey’s product line paired well with both stouts, especially Milk Duds and Whoppers — but nothing could beat the subtle pleasure of a plain chocolate bar.

And, not to get all treacly on you, but the best part of the evening came next: standing by an outdoor fire pit, talking with good friends, staring up into the cold night sky, listening to the laughter and squeals in the distance, imagining that something otherworldly might be snooping around in the woods nearby. Frighteningly good fun.

As always, tell us what you think. What are your favorite memories of Halloween — treats or tricks? Are there other autumn seasonals that you think everyone should try? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

And be sure to visit (and join) the Scribbleskiff page on Facebook (find it here), where you can partake in conversations, find additional information and suggestions from readers, and more.

Originally published October 31, 2008