On Poetry

Whitman, Nerudo, optimism, contentedness

My senior year of college I took a seminar course on pre-1890 American literature¹. My final paper for that class was on Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass².

I’ve always enjoyed reading Whitman. His poetry is uniquely America and so evocative of the time from which he wrote. And, it holds up equally well today. Certainly — along with Kerouac and some of the other Beats — he is one of the biggest influences on my own writing and his description of “a man, a common farmer… of wonderful vigor, calmness, [and] beauty of person” in “I Sing the Body Electric” is an inspiration for how to live³.

As I was organizing some of my books the other day, I flipped open The Poetry of Pablo Neruda. Randomly, fortunately, the first poem that jumped off the page was “Ode to Walt Whitman.” He writes⁴:

And Walt did not disdain
all the gifts of the earth,
the capital's surfeit of curves,
the purple initial of learning,
but he taught me to be [American], 
& raised my eyes to books,
toward the treasure that we find
inside a kernel of wheat.

Engirthed by the clarity
of the plains, he made me see
how the high mountain tutors us.

There’s a lot to learn from poetry, despite what your high school English teacher might have made you believe. Poetry, more so than prose, offers a distillment of emotion, insight swathed in lyricism. It allows you feel the teaching of the mountain. Good poetry spills off the page into our souls. And while I’m by no means a great poet, I try to keep good poetry in mind when I write — and with how I live.

I can only hope that poetic energy — and Neruda’s optimism that Whitman’s voice is “still singing,” “the grass of [his] book” not crushed — manages to transfer through.

The first time I alluded to Whitman in this newsletter was almost two years ago, writing about “stick season.” I quoted his revelation that “to be with those [he likes] is enough / To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, / To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough.⁵” There’s a comfort in this contentedness, the sanctuary given by those close to you. That’s especially worth remembering now, as the weather gets colder, days shorter, darkness comes earlier.

That comfort is augmented with good food. After stuffing nearly thirty pounds of sausage last week, we had enough leftover — that which didn’t fit in casings — to make a riff on that stick season recipe, stuffed squash. We used some of the lingering winter squashes from our garden, cooked the sausage down with vegetables, and had a nice little weeknight meal.

Your choice to augment with a sausage link.

Slice one or two winter squashes in half down the stem, clearing out the seeds and pulp, and coating the halves with olive oil, dousing with salt and pepper. Let them roast in a hot oven (around 425) for about 45 minutes to an hour.

While the squash is roasting, cook down an onion, garlic, mushroom, a bell pepper, some riced cauliflower, and uncased sausage to form a filling. Remove the squash from the oven, stuff the cavities with the filling, and enjoy.

There you go folks, stuffed squash. This is an easy, comforting meal — one that goes equally well on a weeknight as it does on the weekend. Because it comes together so quickly using such simple ingredients, it’s important to use the best you can find.

We’re heading into a long weekend here on the ranch, with aspirations for Kiddo and the Warthog’s first organized races on Monday⁶. We hope they can at least manage to win their age groups.

Whether or not you’re having fun running or just reflecting on Veteran’s Day, I hope you have a comforting weekend, surrounded by those that you like. We’ll see you back here next week, with more food, more fun — but in all likelihood, fewer poems.

1. Taught, of course, by the infamous Radiclani Clytus. Despite being a lackluster freshman advisor (sorry, Owen), Radi was a terrific professor (as evidenced by his reviews on RateMyProfessor.com, where he was described as “the man” and someone who “loves the word modernity”).

The seminar I took with him met once a week on Tuesdays. Mid-way through the semester, Radi simply no-showed the class. The next week, he apologized. He said the day before he got into a car accident and hurt his neck. They gave him some painkillers in the ER, and he took one with a martini later that night. The next thing he knew, it was Wednesday and he woke up in New York.

Valid excuse, I guess, for missing class.

2. And it was one of the better papers I wrote in college, if I do say so myself — even if I can’t for the life of me remember what exactly I wrote.

3. “[All] who saw him loved him, / They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love,” and “[when] he went… to hunt or fish, you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang, / You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.”

4. This is an excerpt by the way. It’s a terrific poem. And, in the published translation the line is “he taught me to be americano” but I took the liberty of switching to “American,” because I think a reminder of what that should mean never hurts.

5. Also from “I Sing the Body Electric".”

6. The Sudbury Road Race’s 1-mile “Fun Run,” to be clear. We will be running alongside them, don’t worry.