amy in alabama

poetry practice

Friend, fellow writer, and UNA professor of writing, Rob Koch, and I lead writing workshops through the Lauderdale County Public Library several Saturdays a year. Today we had a small group, as many of our high school age patrons are on vacation. So we did little critiquing and a lot of playing - with forms. 

We flipped through Lewis Turco's The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics and selected first the Epithalamon form: A B A A B B with four feet, three feet, four, four, four, and three. All the A's must rhyme and all the B's must rhyme and the last two lines must end in the same word, albeit the sixth and final line has only three feet, six syllables where the previous line has four and eight, respectively. Each foot in each line consists of one unaccented word followed by an accented word then an unaccented word and so forth, alternating accented/unaccented throughout the poem. Lost? Bored? Try this - inspired by my recent trip to the slaughterhouse:

My feet grow colder, blocks of ice

while a hog's life is taken

next door, losing his game of dice.

But it's not for me to think twice.

I watch for the love of bacon;

only, for the bacon.

Next we tried a looser form, no rhyming. The Katauta form originated in Japan and follows a 5, 7, 7 - five syllables, seven syllables, seven syllables. The first line makes a statement and the following two answer the call with the turn directly after the first line. This is fun, if not exactly on the mark.

I don't want to clean,

but the house is damn filthy.

And there goes my Saturday.

I can not clean now.

For my hunger is too great.

Please, let the clock strike twelve noon.

Blood sugar is dropping.

Help me please, before I die.

Melodrama is rising.

Sometimes the point is simply to play - no judgement, no goal, but for the sheer enjoyment of words and their possibilities.

a perfect july 4th

There have been few family Fourths in my adult life. I've spent them on New York rooftops, Long Island beaches, France, Italy, Argentina - which is say, I did not really celebrate. But this year the family was together, my youngest sister home from Prague, and a few close friends, harmonious and relaxed, just like a TV family, only cousin Bryant and his family were missing.

Uncle Dennis and Aunt Marsha live on a winding, hard packed Georgia red dirt road in a house Marsha's great grandfather built in 1909. This year celebrates its 100th birthday. I spent summers and major holidays in this house, in the woods across the road, ivy covered ground that felt like a different planet, my boy cousins shooting squirrels, leading the way to various dares and risks I had not yet tried. At night the tall windows, no curtains to soften them, showed me a darkness that did not exist in the street lamp lined suburban streets of my city home. I tried not to think about Children of the Corn on those nights.

Now my sisters and I are grown, my three boy cousins are men with young children of their own. We descended on the open space, flanked by peach trees in full harvest, pecan trees, and cherry trees, a dozen children running about. At 3 o'clock Uncle Dennis started serving the first of a long menu of small feasts. Spicy steamed shrimp and homemade corn tortilla chips - I have absolutely never tasted better - BBQ sandwiches to die for, squash casserole, smoked chicken wings (Dennis boasts a full smoke house kitchen out back, his haven, a space of comfort.) Later there was grilled shrimp, grilled corn in the husk, and portobellos off the grill, homemade cole slaw, Grandmother Griffitts' (my grandmother) Refrigerator Pickles, hot dogs for the kids - I really wanted one but ran out of room - cake, pie...some of us were still eating at 10 p.m.

We played baseball, corn hole - a beanbag tossing game that got it's name from filling a sock with dried corn kernels, tying it up and tossing for points, and we watched a spectacular fireworks show my cousins put together. Down the road, and another across the peach orchard, distant firework displays lit up small parts of the sky. I drew "Mable & Bunny" the next morning, the day's finale still bright in my mind. It was a perfect July 4th.

I've included some recipes below - most are written by Uncle Dennis, the last I improvised on the directions, but the ingredients and quantities came from Grandmother. Keep in mind Dennis does not keep exact recipes so all quantities and times are ballpark figures. Keep a close watch and season to taste.

Spicy Steamed Shrimp:

5 lbs shrimp, preferably wild caught local (these were Georgia coast)

rough chop 4 or 5 celery stalks, one large onion, and one bell pepper. 

*If you have to thaw your shrimp first, be sure to drain them. The idea here is to keep them as dry as possible. 

Mix veggies and shrimp, pour in a little extra virgin olive oil and toss some more. 

Now add approx 1/3 to 1/2 cup Tony Chachere's More Spice Seasoning  - add a 1/2 cup of Tony's Original Cajun Seasoning if desired - and make sure everything has a light coat of seasoning. Place your pot on the fire (medium high on a big burner, wide open on a smaller one) for maybe 3-4 minutes then stir (or toss the whole pot) to mix those shrimp that are cooking on the bottom with those on top. You will need to do this again after every 2 minutes until the shrimp are just underdone. Do not over cook them because they continue to cook during steaming. Now pour off all the liquid you possibly can, you will be surprised at how much you have considering you started with none. Cover the pot and let them sit for maybe 10-15 minutes. Pour off the liquid again and eat a few........or as many as you like! BTW, the veggies are good too!

Uncle Dennis refuses to give up his BBQ sauce recipe, calling it, G Deddy's Blackmarket Bar-B-Que  - "So good you'll swear it's illegal".

Grilled Corn:

Snip the silks off and hope it doesn't have any worms. Place it, unshucked, on the grill on medium heat. Turn it after about 15 minutes and let it cook a total of about 30 - 45 minutes. The time will be determined by how hot your grill is. For the best flavor pull the shucks back (the silks will go away with them) and using the still attached shucks as a handle dip the corn in pure melted butter. With this method, as opposed to boiling, the silks fall off with no effort and the corn cooks in it's own juices and steam.

Grandmother Griffitts’ Refrigerator Pickles (or Overnight Pickles):

8 cups sliced, unpeeled (or peel if you prefer) cucumbers

2 cups sliced onion

1tbsp salt

1 ½ cups vinegar

2 tsp celery seed

2 tsp mustard seed

2 cups sugar

*This is the only direction I got from Grandmother, except to put the mixture in the fridge for a few hours – she usually makes them the day before. Mix the vinegar, salt, sugar, celery and mustard seed in a mason jar, tighten the lid, and shake what your momma gave you until everything has dissolved and blended. Pour this over the sliced cukes and onions in a Tupperware (or whatever you’re going to serve them in), cover, and sit in the fridge for 4 to 8 hours. 

Download July 4th Recipes

                                           

slaughterhouse-16

"Did you feel any pathos," Susan asked. 

I was telling her about my morning with Cox Butcher on County Road 16 in Florence where I witnessed a hog slaughter - head shot, throat cut, no suffering - the massive carcass pushed along the winding rail above our heads, gutted - intestines slopped to the floor in one graceful movement - washed, and sent to rest in the meat locker before processing: bone-in chops, boston butt, cutlets...

I had to stop and think a moment. I had not considered the pathos I felt, the momentary disappointment in watching a living thing die - momentary only because I forced reason to the front: I love bacon, pork chops, BBQ. 

The idea was not an original one, spend a few hours with my butcher to learn the cuts, the technique in carving a roast. Mark Bittman suggests doing so in How To Cook Everything. But that part came later, when I'd seen enough method and slipped out of the warm, iron-air slaughter area and into the cold, steel-tabled carving room next door. The witnessing slaughter part of this idea came from Michael Pollan and his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. I decided to see exactly how this all worked, how that mouthwatering, rich pork belly with the crispy outside and tender, butter-like inside made it's way to my plate. The cook and foodie in me felt a responsibility. I'd killed and gutted chickens before and this experience seemed a natural progression.  

Thank you to Adam & Renee Cox, owners of Cox Butcher Shop, for allowing me to sit in. And thank you to their USDA meat inspector, who took the time to show me what lymph nodes look like and where a parasite could bore a solid hole in the liver. 

And yes, there was a little pathos, watching that last hog lay face down in the blood of those before him, his front legs bent in natural surrender, his hinds stubborn, knees locked, ass up, as if they might turn around and walk out. 

                                    "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt" 

                                         - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five

And the sale is: local ingredients, naturally raised. These hogs come from good stock, Lauderdale County grown. I'm told they lived a good life, no hormones, no steroids, and wandered freely, like Adam's cows grazing behind the shop. He doesn't add preservatives when he packages and everything in the case is fresh. I buy beef and lamb from Adam, and pay the processing fee on venison in the fall when lucky hunters bring home more than they can handle. Chris, Adam's part time butcher who showed me the ropes around a side of beef, suggested I come back during deer season. "It's a whole other ball game," he said. 

Thank you to Chris for showing me how to move a knife with the grain, how an inch thick of meat around the outside of a ribeye defines the cut - present or not - and the trick to tough cuts sold as cutlets: extra trip or two through the tenderizer and you get a cube steak that will just about melt in your mouth.

And while I feel a little smarter with a knife and beef shoulder, and a tad familiar with the efficient job of preparing a hog, I think I'll leave this one to the professionals. I'm sticking to cooking and eating.

a blogger not blogging

I started this blog as an online portfolio to show interested editors of various publications I might query for freelance work. It's supposed to be a practice in discipline and writing. I haven't posted in a month. Clearly the process is working.

Truth be told I haven't written much of anything in weeks, other than a few journal entries. I've done a little drawing and very little reading. I've just been so busy with the garden and chasing my red broiler chickens around the yard, watching them get fat and happy on natural feed. I'm starting up a business with a friend - a part time project certain to bring in money. Writers not writing, especially, need an income. I witnessed a hog slaughter and learned to carve a side of beef. I've been cooking up a storm, following other's recipes and creating my own. I've worked the Master Gardner helpline and fought the japanese beetles threatening my garden - an ongoing battle of wits and soapy water. 

The next few weeks aren't looking any calmer: party to plan, parties to attend, more gardening, more cooking, copywriting deadline, fuel the new business. And through all of this the ideas continue to flow. It's all I can do to jot down the tune, so to speak, and file it away on my desk, worktable, nightstand, or in my purse. 

Natalie Chanin, friend and ardent blogger, never mind she's an internationally known designer with a substantial, growing following (my current numbers cap at three), she blogs nearly every day. And ten years ago, she recently told me, despite everything that should have been or could have been, she started doing exactly what she felt drawn to do: she sewed. Everyday. 

In a recent blog post Natalie shared a link to Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, discussing creativity . Gilbert reminded me of the ancient Greek belief in genius. A person could not be a genius, but could have a genius - a spirit, a muse, a daemon, who worked with the artist, the writer, the performer, to create. She says, in having a partner, the creator can share the huge responsibility of creating. Perhaps it also holds the creator accountable. We have to show up and do our part, do the work. 

It suddenly dawned on me, my genius is working a lot harder than I am.

So I'm crossing off projects, postponing others, and working to make time to do the work. How fortunate I am to have been blessed with an active, prolific genius. She's standing here now, tapping her toe, giving me that look.