food lit mag

The first issue of Lucky peaches was large on Ramen noodles. In the second issue, the theme is 'The Sweet Spot'. 

Ike jime

'The Ripeness and the rot' moves from a vegetable's freshness situation to a chef's most creative period which is generalised to all artists. Rebecca Rusch  is an example of comeback in sports.  This ties in with 'Perfect moment' of knowing the window of the best taste of an ingredient.

Celeste Byers

sweet spots on banana.

Christina Tosi details few recipes like Arnold palmer cake made at Momofuku milk bar.

'Expired to perfection' is a look at refrigerator's contents and their status. 'Repurposing'. 

I like the comic-satire of accepting the mistakes in their recipes. The comic of the experiences of an experimental cook speak to the uncertainity of the dish hanging over the head of the cook.  It is literal when a sheet of pasta is hanging from the head of the cook, being churned out of the pasta machine. 

There is a great history of Miso but when it read list of ingredients it became irrelevant like the many kinds of ramen in the first issue.

Not all of it is accessible. I dont get what they mean by 'high level cooking'. Never the less, you learn many things about cooking, not just techniques and ingredients but a broad look at cooking not just as a set of recipes or ingredients but also as an art both in execution and representation, its tradition and history.

Tatsuo Ikeda knife

Naeng myun

Coi restaurant

Nage

Another review

Eating lychees under an avocado tree

Author: Gail Simmons

At first I mistook the ‘professional eater’ in the title for the competitor eater like Man Vs Food.

Our first experiences with food start with mom and her kitchen. Gail Simmons’s interest in cooking too took off at her mom’s kitchen making omelettes. Later she took this to an assembly line level churning out 50 of those at a Kibbutz in Israel that sounds like a ‘Biosphere’ experiment.

Her father having grown up in South Africa, the author had access to special foods there resulting in a wider palate. She has traveled widely and tasted food in all those places.

She let her passion lead her to her career in food writing and then a Merchandising manager. She went to culinary school, worked on the line and learned the business of restaurants. She excerpted a food journal to give the readers an idea of how much food she tastes in a day.

I have seen my share of ‘Chopped’. So I was interested in knowing the behind the scenes of cooking competition on TV. The author has written of her experiences judging food on top Chef. She classifies the contestants whom she calls chef-testants. ‘Top Chef Just Desserts’ was an insight into how food contests have to consider the cooking time and recipe policies before issuing a challenge.

The  book's focus on food is maintained well all along the food. Even when she describes her wedding, the emphasis is on the food for the event. Even though this book does not have many recipes or much cooking, with its description of techniques (how in modernist cuisine, having a foam adds the essence without adding texture or volume) and a wide variety of foods it urges the reader to savor each morsel to get the taste/essence of it. Like the author says 'being a young line cook (is) you dont use your mind much. You are taking orders. you're not thinking or creating - ... I needed to go back to using my head'.

In the end she does say that she is ‘not in the business of competitive consumption’.

Culinary skill acquisition at 'Chez Weil Duane'

How to Cook Like a Man: A Memoir of Cookbook Obsession by 

Daniel Duane

Theres the eternal question of art for arts sake or for the buyer/viewer. When it comes to food we know its about the one who is going to eat the food, but its difficult to wrap your head around the fact that atleast courtesy would call for exclusion of bell peppers from the ‘pav bhaaji’ if your audience does not like the peppers, but it wont be the real pav bhaaji if you get compassionate. The author is in for a surprise when he ends up ‘interested in food as love – food as sustenance, generosity and balm’ after years journey of hacking at cookbooks.

I like reading anything about food and cooking. After reading ‘how to cook like a man’ by Daniel Duane, when I realised that ‘No Cheating, no dying I had a good marriage. Then I tried to make it better’ was by his wife Elizabeth Weil, I was curious to know the effect of the author’s cooking straight from the horses’ mouth.

Daniel Duane has an obsession for cookbooks, especially the ones which have some chronological order associated with them. ‘the book’s A-Z quality – inviting me to cook every recipe therein –‘. The book being referred to is Chez Panisse Vegetables. He didn’t stop with that. He then moved to other books by Alice Waters.  He justifies that ‘…my (his) compulsions came not from dysfunction or narcissism but rather from a healthy impulse to find joy and curiosity in everyday life’. But it wasn’t just a compulsion for the new dad, he was doing the cooking to feed his family that consists of a wife who likes to eat simple food.

The author’s wife refers to his pre-cook book days as ‘when food was still fuel for him’. Faced with all this food on the table, she wondered if he could offer her choices in meals. The chef conceded for choice in breakfast but not in dinner, which is when he gets to follow all the complicated and exotic recipes, not to mention the expensive grocery shopping preceding that.

His wife’s pregnancy, the house’s dire carpenting needs do not deter the man with a knife. He carried sourdough sponge along with him, if he went out of town so he could feed it regularly.  Somewhere along the line when too many truffle recipes alienated him from his friends, he realised that he needed to mould his interest to meet his family needs instead of maniacally following recipes.

In the end he is at peace with culinary tastes of his family members. When he began he had two signature dishes. After years of making all the recipes, he has learnt the middle way of keeping his audience and their food taste in mind.

He is not just a home cook. Magazine assignments take him fishing, let him go on a steak marathon in Vegas, meetings with the food celebrities. This reporting life gives us a peek into the exclusive world of food.

When he met Alice, he asked what she would do with a certain set of ingredients and that’s when I realized that I read an article of his in ‘food and wine’ which combined this experience as well as cooking with Thomas Keller.

  

In cooking you begin with the ache and end with the object, where in most of the life of the appetites – courtship, marriage – you start with the object and end with the ache – Adam Gopnik

Z Wraps 3-Pack, Reusable Food Wrap and Food Saver, Alternative to Plastic Wrap, Sustainable, Eco Friendly Beeswax Food Wrap - Small, Medium, Large (Connect the Dots)

Married to an obsessive cook

Berkeley faith in better living through chemistry - Elizabeth weil
Neil LaBute
surfer mellow
Sukkah
Octopus Daube
Creatine in ox heart for muscle recovery
Kung Fu grasshopper
Spatchcocked chicken

Sign language

is not the same to everyone

To natives:
Beggars put their left hand
on stomach
and the right - fingers
gathered to join at tips
are held midair ever so
close to the mouth
to mimic eating

To foreigners:
The right hand holds
an imaginary fork

********
from Anne Lamotts experience of 'beggars ..pantomiming feeding themselves with fork' in India from 'Some Assembly required'.

Resounding questions

After going through this book, comparing Jerry McGill's experience with 'Save the Date' Jennifer's, a big glaring question. What about legal recourse?

With every aspect of life that has been and could have been, McGill tried to place his assailant in a definable web of love and family ties that keep us rooted. He did this by asking him questions around the time the tragic event of the shooting happened and his stance of everyday life.

Grandson's first year

We as parents have the illusion that we make our kids stronger, but they make us stronger - Sam Lamott

When Sam tells Annie in an interview that the child in question 'gets bigger and stronger every regardless of us(them), instead of because of us(them)', Annie must have felt less helpless about bringing up Sam without the father around. 

Annie summarises life's lessons to Jax that  there is no instruction manual.

Funny that Annie should go into Enraha mode to shoo away beggars in India - My Grotesque nation.

Four immutable laws of spirit
Japanese cow noisemaker

foot phone

They never walk towards you - Anne Lamott

Annie is the author of 

We call these the journals of the babies. But they are by the mothers/parents. The language and the behavior of the baby that we try to decode.

How would the journal be in the baby's language?
After the morning feeding, I smiled and regaled mommy.

Anne Lamott says that her grandson's actions would put Jack lalanne. When I read that line, I thought of all the times where we do this comparision to the top performers. Why is it not enough to say the best of the fitness gurus (That would also refer to the times when news traveled not farther than the next village). To make it real, we give a specific name that is not known to all.


I can barely work a toaster - Anne Lamott in reply to possessing any knowledge of car wiring. If the toaster she uses has anything to do with producing a graphic of the weather on the bread, then its something.

Sometimes

A hand on your chest
in ASL "please"

hand together
on your chest
like in prayer

she stops
to shake her
head
like she's had
some heady mix

A housewarming gift

Nef
One young summer
our night lamp
was a ship
silver colored with a
small bulb.

The Queen of PCT

When the author Cheryl Strayed’s mother was diagnosed of cancer that sneaked on a person with healthy habits, she thought it must be her town docs who didn’t know much. While the docs gave the mom a year, she died in 49 days.

Cheryl had imagined a family with her as the substitute mother which didn’t work. After that her whole family came unglued, she was untethered but for her marriage which she pulled out of to ‘gather(ed) up inside of me’ through a hike on the Pacific crest trail.

The mode of walking she chose needs a comment. Her journey is halfway between a pilgrimage like ‘The Santiago’ but there is no one to stamp to validate that you went through all the stops and a road trip like ‘Going back to Bisbee’ by Richard Shelton where the landscape plays a major part with its detailed history. Here the author turns herself into the place that she delves into. Its said that driving is by muscle memory once you learn it but walking being the most natural act, frees your mind to do the thinking. But in the wild, solo the mind also fuels its fears. In this tug of war, what helped the author was the books she carried with her.

On the hike she wonders about the hardness of PCT vs the recent events in her life and thinks that ‘Perhaps the impulse to purchase the PCT guidebook months before had been a primal grab for a cure, for the thread of my life that had been severed’.

The way she begins her hike with an oversized pack that she is unable to lift is hilarious.

She comes across as a person with ‘should have read the guide’ seems ill prepared for the PCT hike. But after one day on the trail she feels experienced. Her hiking pace doubles in a couple of weeks. Her way of confronting the wild animals is calling out their names.

This act of strength is something that everyone applauds while at the same time they wonder about the parents who would let their daughter go it alone in the wild like this. This subject being broached up frequently by the fellow hikers, she has to find the coordinates of her family ties.

Serious hikers of long trails like this and Appalachian mail themselves food that can be picked half way or somewhere along, so dont have to carry all of their food for the journey.
She wanted to do the hike alone and turned down company during the hike. She wanted full responsibility of her survival on the trail. Yet, the vastness amazing her also left her lonely. At stop points she was always glad to have company and meet up with other PCT

Hikers.

The author chose ‘Bridge of the Gods’ as her destination. Bridge which is a symbol for transformation.

‘The bull, I acknowledged grimly, could be in either direction, since I hadn’t seen where he’d run once I closed my eyes. I could only choose between the bull that would take me back and the bull that would take me forward.

And so I walked on.’

We are now in the mountains

and they are in us ..

John Muir, My First summer in the Sierra

Survivor tale

A friend once sent an invitation with ‘save the date’. The first time I learnt of wedding planners was through the JLo movie. Put together, I was interested in knowing an event planner’s job experience of fixing up things.

Jennifer Gilbert with entrepreneurial ideas as a kid and ‘viral party’ throwing skills, was cut out for a career that screams power in her dreams as well as reality. After a life of wanderlust in Europe, a 22yr old, she was ready to fall into a fabulous life until a tragic event put a ‘before and after’ break in her life. The experience not only splintered her but sent her into a cocoon when she is not pumping energy into event planning.

The author can take you to the fanciest of places where its hard to get in – as an event planner. She can take you to the lowest of lows where even in a situation of shock, you wont panic but fight for life like her. After becoming a victim of a random attempted murder, she shared how she felt nothing. The one thing that saw her through was her passion for celebrating the memorable moments in others lives. When her tragic experience was ‘at leasted’ away she learnt to listen to the pains and fears of others, however small they may be, a trait that helped her in her business.The way she ran her event planning business, her experiences with hard to please clients, last moment ‘saving the day’ to make everything perfect even if it does not fall in the bucket of her job duties, its no wonder that she got the recognition for it.

She is written well of her victim guilt, strife being a broken person with no scars on the outside. Ironically when she later writes of her son’s alopecia a condition where nothing’s wrong inside. She has addressed issues like body image which took her a lot of time to overcome through the journey of peeling of her defense layers.

In this book, the author switches well between the personal tone when it comes to the pursuit of happiness through relationships and a survivor tone when she recalls the event and its effect three years later when she has to face all the bad memories again. The book is always optimistic even if the author sometimes thinks that she is the best enemy of her happiness. Control personified, her life experiences have taught her that the she may not have control over the events but she can control who she is after.

It got weary to read of the n love interests. I do understand that given the life changing experience, she had to take many chances at love and life.

I find it surprising that for a type A++ planner, she wouldn’t read up on signs of labor.

A book with similar turning point is Dear Marcus: A Letter to the Man Who Shot Me  by Jerry McGill

The April prompt of  switchback  is: "Thought is made in the mouth"

search led me to pg 87

Unfledged starling

A baby bird chip chips
for food
bobbing its head into
the air in different positions
Its like many baby birds
asking for food

Looking at the new bird
in the metal enclosure
of parking lot shed legs
with a little opening

I wonder if a bird mom
ever lays eggs in a place
where the eggs fit but the
born bird might not be
able to come out

Whenever I went that way
I saw the bird gape out
or heard it

Today I went from the other
side of the pole to see that
the bird's  is
immortalised neck up
stuck between a horizontal
beam and the falling edge of
the shed.
If it found it difficult to pull
it head back how did it
jut in there?

I was going to mark the day
I stop hearing the bird as
its first flight day

First portrait second portrait

I had great expectations from Saramago in 'The Manual of Painting and Calligraphy' after having enjoyed both his memoir 'Small Memories' and 'The notebook'. The title which presages the view of an artist is a subject dear to me. Despite being the right reader, I couldnt key into the book.
I liked the concept of exploration of a subject in another medium (the narrator's primary being painting and secondary writing) as well as another attempt stripping an artistic endeavour of its chance happening outcome (have you ever tried to draw something and realise that you drew something too well but you know you cannot repeat it again ) in the first attempt and actually knowing the subject. I kept myself interested just on this single concept but could not continue after half the book. when I read something new of artists or their work, I am inclined to reading more about it. In this book, there are many references to such works as part of the narrator's travelogue. But the accounts lack conviction.
I notice that the previous books I read were nonfiction and this is fiction. I enjoy nonfiction better. Still I cannot believe that the readability would differ so much. But this has happened in the past where I liked Kazuo Ishiguro's 'Remains of the day' and 'The Artist of the Floating World' but not 'Never Let me go'. In Ishiguro's case it was his latest work that did not come together. But in Saramago's case, I like dhis last works best.

GIGO

At Golconda fort, the echo was routed
If you make the noise at the bottom
someone at the top of the hill
hears the echo
In The King and the drum,
the drum echoed what the barber
told it everyday - The
king has horns.

Passing fancy

If you are planning a baby shower, then you might find these flowers from chart paper fascinating.

The Exquisite Book of Paper Flowers: A Guide to Making Unbelievably Realistic Paper Blooms

A kid attends a baby shower
He is told there will be a
baby
At the party, he wants to
meet the baby.
His mom pats on a pregnant
mom's belly to show the whereabouts
of the baby

At a new year party at his house
when the car door opens
the kid calls out the name
of the baby
He shares his toys with the mom
of the baby
He wonders who is the mom
of the baby
They play a game of saving a
motorcylce from the Optimus by
a 'hide and seek'.

On the rough seas

At first the two stories run parallel in narration. One, a riveting story of five fishermen who set out from Mexico and without knowing drifted to unknown place to be rescued by Taiwanese fishermen after 10 months on sea. The other is the author's own. It begins with the glitter of his success story and then the decline. These two stories join when the author has moved into the publishing business.

Survival stories. What about them attracts people? With someone living to tell the story is hope in adversity. In these kinds of stories, to know what the survivors went through is insightful. The author sets out to find the survivors and present the story to the largest audience possible. To that extent, he puts in all his resources into it.

A big problem that I have with the `intertwining' of stories - both have faith in common, which is what led him to the survival story but the part where he is trying to bridge the gap of how his marriage was saved through this story is not convincing. In fact his involvement with the story put his already strained marriage to a further test.

The author has a flexible writing style to suite the subject's tone. He can handle serious tone of a weighty survival tale, share the ups and downs of his personal life to show the influence of faith towards the better in a lighter vein. In the pursuit of the story, he showed his doubts voiced about it in the media which didn't reduce his interest because of the connection he felt with the survivors.

Whose planet is it?

Recently having read in ‘A Planet of Viruses’, that viruses help in photosynthesis, I was curious if ‘The Man who planted trees’ book by Jim Robbins would have anything on it. It does mention the role of viruses in generating new diseases. Reading ‘Sex on six legs’, where it is all about the intelligent and good things that insects do, this book looks at the other side to see what harm insects do to the trees. Even this book like the six legs book quantizes the good done by its subject in terms of money.

And the subject is ‘Trees’ although it is on ‘The Man who planted Trees’. That man’s mission was to safeguard trees by saving genetics of the oldest trees to store it for future study when better tools are available and by cloning the trees. I realize that this review is partial to the trees.

Fader, zoonotic, wind training, dimensional stability, edge effect, forest migration. There are many terms like these about trees which are unknown to the general public. The author uses his skill of science writing and explains the terms and concepts thereby holding the readers attention and giving them a learners high to keep on going. He is comfortable in donning the hat of explaining science of how insects go about destroying trees, how trees work at cleaning up the air, creating clouds as well as portrayal of David Milarch who came up with the Champion project. I have not heard of this project before. So there you see, why there needs to be a book like this.

It is two books one that serves as a natural history of all major trees and another of the Big Tree project which is a brainchild of David Milarch who was inspired to do this project from a Near Death Experience. Milarch’s project’s course, tribulations and successes are documented. Instead of lamenting about global warming and how we are clueless as to what to do, here’s a ‘done it’ and the author’s ‘Bioplan’ calling for steps that have all been reached at with research in the past few years.

Each tree’s characteristics and their benefit to humans are well described. The author brings across the point about how human actions detrimental to the trees, disable the trees from taking caring of us and the planet by the ways available to it. For example human induced drought kills the trees and deforestation causes floods. A direct relation has been found between trees and their ability to cause rain with the help of a microorganism that can help form clouds. Trees provide home to a wide variety of species. A delicate balance is being tampered with human actions.

The book is based on research done in the last decade. The research as well as the cases mentioned spans the globe. By admitting that there is still so much unknown to the scientists regarding trees functioning but phrasing the unknowns will pique the interest of budding ecoscientists.

The author has managed to keep the readers in the magic of science with not just enhancing our current knowledge about trees but also explaining wherever possible why something is done the way it is done. I found many interesting facts in the book (too many to list). How some trees are hard to date by the ring counting method, when the growth is not from the main stump, how the aerosols emitted by the trees are helpful in preventing and treating cancer and many other medical conditions, how Phytoplanktons that generate 90% of the oxygen need trees to filter polluted water, how the wind event in Canada caused a large population of beetles to move to another forest causing more destruction but that is supposed to be good too in fertilizing the soil.

Few eye opening quotes:
Less diversity means less opportunities for adaptation – Reed Noss.
When the Europeans landed, the forests were so thick its often been said that a squirrel could travel from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi river without touching the ground.

Hiking with your kid

Looking at the cover picture of 'Up: A mother and daughter's peakbagging adventure', I formed an idea of the author hiking into the real wild. After reading the book I realize that it is as much about the young kid who hiked as much as of the mother who was in all the situations, terrible and exhilarating that you find yourselves on two feet in the mountains with as little or as much comfort that you can carry with you.

I like the motivation of the author Patricia Ellis Herr to provide an environment for her children where they can be immersed in nature. What better than hiking mountains? Hiking, strenuous as it can be, is bound to give you the high of achievement too. Alex, the kid draws the mountain, not content with scaling it. When we see the same person twice on the same hiking route, we wonder and ask if he/she is training for something. So if a hiker sees a kid then there will be some questions and encouragement. I know a kid age 6 who can hike 6 miles. I heard of a kid who was out to visit as many national parks as she can.

When the author realized that her daughter could hike peaks, a flyer about peak bagging the forty eight 4000fters in the Whites got her started on with the goal of attaining it. Their experience hiking together with unexpected events and outcomes is an engaging read. Hiking on the trails is no less of an adventure, especially when you have a kid along. With hiking, starting from losing way, to not having enough supplies, to fickle weather, anything can happen and that’s what makes it interesting in going from point A and returning back to it. Added to this in the nature’s bounty, you get close to clouds and happiness. Then there are the denizens of nature who can stop you on the trail. But you have to go on to the peak or home. As I kept reading of the hikes, I was reminded of the profiles of the mountains that I have hiked and points where we had encounters with animals. The last peak bagging event was interesting to imagine with all the community support shown to Alex.

There will be a comparison with Tiger Mom book. In this book, we get to know the child who is on a mission. The author balanced her presence with her daughter’s persona in the book. The author’s non-hindering parenting style includes the child’s wishes too. I recognized the father Hugh Herr from ‘The Sorcerers and their apprentices’. His story of how he came to have prostheses is illuminating of how an adventure can end on a wrong note.

Holorime

Take as long as you like to do this.

Action in cigarette pack

I came across Still Life with woodpecker book. I had read Skinny legs and all. I remember this book as having a sppon and other inanimate things as characters. When the back of the book said 'pack of Camels' I couldnt brace myself for it.

Jim Robbins
Bark beetle and climate change
Champion tree

bacteria in plants that helps in rain.

A wind event shifted beetle population.

Storms of my grandchildren

Arboretum America
Dame Miriam Rothschild

Shinrin yoku

Redwood cloning


In this book, prostaglandins are said to be triggered when body is fighting fever, their production is inhibited by using acetylsalicyclic acid of aspirin. Moms recognise the prostaglandin from what-triggers-the-contractions

Thoracentesis
Twilight brigade - inspired from an NDE

Trish and Alex

Personal locator beacon

Greatkids Outdoors. Now I want to read that Before they are gone.
Children and Nature
Nature rocks

Time to write by the author of Your creative writing masterclass

A flower

A flower’s
track of
fragrance
attracts
a train
of bees.

The moon
ripples

the rocks
next to
the water
reflect
the moon

4.16.2008 10:43pm

Book list

story

Now I get to read Up and The Man who planted trees from Wish list but more add to it.

I want to read
Apron Anxiety
How to Cook like a man
Homesick and happy : How time away from parents can help a child grow

Essays

Pulphead
As said in this review, The final comeback of Axl Rose essay is very well written. Makes Axl interesting for those who know an dont know him. His At a Shelter (After Katrina)
deposits you in the place ravished by nature. His Michael essay makes Jackson human and liberates the artist of any judgement. Unnamed Caves essay and the pictures of Mud Glyph Cave.
Cumberland plateau

Mysterious insects

Sex on six legs

I have heard of Dung beetles on NPR. Just snippets here and there, so I didnt catch the part about the great good they do cleaning up the planet. There are numbers to show the benefit in terms of money. This metric is use di this book for many other activities of insects.

Last night I slept reading of Pestival's homage to Michael Jackson with a moon walker Vegetable Wasp. Sure enough I dreamt of being on a tram where Michael Jackson was doing an exclusive song-dance and we were all about to crash.

As kids we were told that cockroaches were resilient. They could survive the deserts and the freezing Antartica. Just when the roach was getting the 'Super insect' award, an Emerald wasp hypnotised it off-stage.

Zombie Caterpillars. Wow now dont we pity the caterpillar a natural death by another insect.


Delhi Sands flower-loving fly

Evidence of counting in insects
Training bees to recognise faces

Lingual Journal

Recently we had a hailstorm. The papers referred to it as winter storm.
And an unpredicted rainbow too.

Hailstones the size of blue berries filled the little patch of garden like it has been sp(r)ayed with fertilisers.

I was thinking of how it is easy for us to subtract something and still make sense but harder to think of addition of something to bring out another meaning.

I was thinking like if there's an opposite. Epenthesis is the linguist's answer.

A while ago I was thinking how will I teach my child of Sandhi where two words add and at the juncture a different letter comes in. Epenthesis seems to retain all the letters in most cases instead of gobbling up some letters as 'service fee'.

My mom was telling that padava thargathi (tenth class) is now being referred to as pado thargathi ((still) tenth class). Spoken is taking the matter in its hands from the written.

I am worrying about teaching difficult concepts in Telugu, my mother tongue to my child but I am far losing touch with it. Few years ago, my uncle said that it was my accent, I am holding onto each sound. But now I know it even in the construction, I am filling in a lot of letters to communicate what I like to say but it all come sout in words that do not belong to the language except for the main verb. Makes for a good laugh. But what will the child learn from my garbled utterances? And Hindi, it is so taking the back bench in the brain. I am putting in English while speaking Hindi afraid to take the liberty of modifying it like I do to Telugu. I have learnt written Telugu only till 5th grade. I learnt written Hindi from 6th to 10th grade. I learnt spoken Hindi as a kid but forgot it by the time I came to high school. When I relearnt it, I didnt do learn it alright(Elision!).

Still describe

Two visual inspirations.
Blue Antelope and Orange Elephant got me started for the theme 'lush'.
The orange colour of the elephant reminded me of Hanuman

When I thought of the theme of lush, I couldnt think of anything but green, but now I think from what has struck me luscious in these pictures, any single colour in abundance has the same effect of submerging us in its hue.
Green lush is of nature, artists have defined lush in their own terms by the lusciousness of their imagination.

Monochromal flourishes

1. Blue antelope
With a buoyant
Web of blue
Antlers

Antlers poking
in different directions
Like birds of paradise

An artist settles
a white bird on
the head
two on the back

2. Orange elephant in the room
with gold floral patterns
matches the wallpaper
orange like
the statue of Hanuman
smeared with the sticky paste


While revising it, I stopped at the 'like' and was reminded of the shadows game. I then removed the description of the white birds and replaced it with

like fingers held in
the dark to cast
shadows
thumb and forefinger
join to form the head
and the rest antlers

Writing Exercise:
When I saw the elephant picture yesterday I couldnt explain why I was taken with it. Today I looked at the blue antelope, a thing like that stays with you for a while. So I just described them. After that when I came to the like
, it was like stopping at a log in your way to look around more for something
the like was my passport to many other lines.
A like in a poem is the starting point of infinte things to be said. Massage the like which has a hold on half of the poetry world.

Describe

In The ransom of red chief 0.Henry talks about a town called Summit.

It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class ofpeasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.

Describe humorously by changing the subject to an object reflecting the culture of the subject.

Welterweight

500 acres and no place to hide

When things go viral

World of viruses
The loom
Naica caves. Heard of Belum caves just now.

The discovery of virus by Beijernick is a goose chase story.

How do viruses move DNA between species and generate new genetic material?

The author's Emeral wasp works has been quoted in another book sex on six legs, unfortunately the subject of viruses lacks that charm.

Rev the food writing

Missionstreetfood

Zhaliang


Decision-making is more important to cooking than exact amounts, temperatures or times - Anthony Myint.

Anthony Myint's articles on food are creative. for example, the one reviewing NOMA.

Sex on six legs

Earwig

Readers of past

A room size
library
I have chosen
few books

The issuer is here
Have you read your
Bhaktin and Chekov

I adjust my answer
from Yes to
No (since its been a while)

The book without front cover
has philosophy on it

But philosophy is in between definitions

I show my choice of two
Reviews - literary magazines

Men of our time

The border is what joins us

- Border lines, Alberto Alvaro Rios

The fence conjoins us
Cosmos contains us

Brave mom

When you drive, you dont get to peek much at others sharing the road. But in the passenger seat you are a witness to all kinds of things. I saw a mom driving a happy kid. The kid was having an icecream in the car.

A good poetry book site

Alberto Alvaro Rios

In A man then suddenly stops moving, is not afraid to make a leap right in the first para, from a literal act of chewing a fruit to a long term act of mulling.

In A small motor, why does the poet say that there is an animal in him and that animal has hunger, why does he distance the desire by two levels? Also in the previous line it is a mechanical motor and then it becomes animalistic and then human.

Every pencil is filled with a book

- Alberto Alvaro Rios

Every brush is filled with a scene
Every sword/gun a blood bank
injection a florentine of wellness

Indiana review

Larissa Szporluk
William Dickey
Albert Goldbarth
Sharon Cumberland
Joshua Mckinney
Diane Seuss Bakerman
Peter Cooley
Angela Shaw
Malinda Markham
Matthew Lippman
John Surowiecki
Julia Kasdorf
David Rivard
Devolution of the nude

Indiana Review

A necklace of shells coiled her throat in Lynda Hull's poem

Corey Marks Interview

Belle Waring and a joint blog

On Fever, Mood and crows on pg 43 of Dark Blonde. In Crow Planet, crows have lifted another writer from depression.

Rebecca Seiferle

Alberto Alvaro Rios on poets.org, on ASU. In 'What abides' poem he draws on the 'walk' and extends it pliantly. In 'Aunt Matilde's story of the big Day', he starts writing about a remmebered day trying to be remembered on a day when nothing else is to be remembered and then extends it to years. In 'My Chili', Chili is so many things at once. Reading his poetry can give you many ideas on how to write.

An incomplete life

A person who knows her work to be done. But what if the available time does not let her finish the job along with others that need to be done.

A way to balance will and responsibility.

Utility & futility

When we think about a thing, if we were to write of it, we first think what it does.

A good ad

At the mail box, was a sheet with things on sale, probably by a person moving. It was in a row column format of pictures of inline roller skates, gas cooker, blinds, printer, vacuum cleaner and others, mentioning their condition and price. When I went in the evening, I think it wasn’t there.

Former poet

While reading Indiana Review Volume 18, Number 1 (Spirituality & American writing), I came across Neal Bower’s ‘Faith at the turn of the century’. I didn’t get the poem but was interested in reading other poems of his. A look at his profile revealed that he calls himself a former poet.
Neal Bowers
what happens to a former poet when he next sees his muse again?

Boxed letters

1. Write a poem from the words in a crossword

2. Write a poem from the letters on a scrabble board

3. Write clues for words in a crossword or a scrabble game

Joy of poetry in everyday life

Most of Jane Shore's poems in That said appeal with their non-jarring shock value of their novelty in terms of subject matter.
Her three line stanza, short line poems almost never work.
In `The Russian doll' title lent to cover photo poem, we see amorphous thoughts put into words snug just like doll inside a doll.
In `Tender acre', by using the word `bargello' for the patterns on a snake, she is the poet whose eternal task is to get the right word for a thing.
There are vague references to fairy tales and folk tales in some of her poems.But fairy tales make a direct reference in a poem where the poet plays out all the stories with her daughter. I like the series of poems in which she writes about her daughter. Especially in `the sound of sense', recognizing her daughter's learning to read as the sounding of various meter elements again shows her poet eye/ear.
From here on, the poems star her family members. Within the everydayness of the poems are experiences which the readers can relate to in different stages of life. Sometimes the endings - like one of her toy going mute while she grows up finding her voice - offer boomerang twists to the poem.
There are many things a beginner poet can learn from these poems. Her expression of a feeling in an anti-feeling holds the tension of the conflict on the page. In 'sh-t soup' poem the metaphors are not just limited to linking two words but the whole poem - recipe of a dish to that of a life.
when she writes 'A voice called out "This is your room.This is your bed"' in 'dream city' poem, I feel pushed to find out the voice of every inanimate thing, not an inanimate voice but lively with inflection.
In one of the poems she describes fortune cookies as lips with the white paper as a tongue. This reminded of the 'oracle'. Such coincidental extensions leave the readers with possibilities of extending every metaphor they meet.

The Manual of painting and calligraphy

Jose Saramago's interview

I chose something else over Lower River. This TNY excerpt should give me an idea if I did right.
Interesting book site and another

Writing discipline

Adair Lara writes that David Lehman wrote a poem a day and Khaled Hosseini of 'The Kite Runner' wrote everyday at 5 in the morning while finding time to be a physician.

Simpler than OJ

Unbinding the heart

In the book, the author explains the difference between a maze and a labyrinth. Her life and her search for self and meaning traces the path of a labyrinth with the center being her home. If you are the kind of reader who likes stories where the characters meet dead ends and still find the way out of a maze, then this book is not for you. Its not the adversity that fuels the author but the tenets of life passed on to her by her mother.

OR

In the preface of 'Unbinding the Heart', author Agapi Stassinopoulos uses the word 'synchronicity' many times. You begin to wonder about the meaning. Once you are informed of the originator of the term - Carl Jung and its relation with 'meaning', you can see the importance of meaning and its search in the author's life.
The book is written in independent chapters. Thats good as well as bad when some major events are repeated more than thrice (even if just a mention). Write to me if the age at which her parents got seperated doesnt get tattooed in your brain.
I picked the book for 'fearless living' in the description of the book. I want to know what other futures can we dream of if we dont limit ourselves even if that contains a huge monster from mars chasing us.
The book is very simple. There is no huge concept or sequence of things to be done. As I kept reading I wondered if its the same person all through. There's this image you have of the autor for whom things are falling in place even if after a great amount of persistence and then there's the ascetic side of forwarding her spirituality. But it is in this duality that she made her life path happen.
The author's mother has been a big influence on her philosophy of life. With that foundation, she was confident to find her own path. The author's wisdom lies in being a part of her friends experiences and learning from them.
Most books start with why they were written but this book ends with the moment the author found her reason. To share that 'our true home is inside ourselves'.

When spring came, the enormous old weeping cherry outside my dorm bloomed as though it had invented the word. - Frances Mayes, The Discovery of poetry

When writers write about their feelings, some can hook the reader like a magnet.