If I said I meant Easter eggs as in video games, would that make you want to read this?

I think the reason so many people don't like poetry is because it seems to take an awful lot of work to get to the bottom of a poem.  It's like digging for Easter eggs.  That's why I didn't really get into poetry until I discovered Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.  They are two confessional poets, and that just made what they were writing so much more accessible.  Then there's Billy Collins.  Billy Collins was the Poet Laureate of the U.S. in 2001.  Poet Stephen Dunn once said about him, "He doesn't hide things from us, as I think lesser poets do. He allows us to overhear, clearly, what he himself has discovered."  I leave you the following poem, and you can see if you think that holds true:

Introduction to Poetry

-Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

I have a cold, and I'm supposed to feed it.

This is not a cooking blog, but I can't help sharing what I've been up to over the weekend, which includes this fabulous coffee cake:

It's actually the Barefoot Contessa's recipe, but I altered it ever so slightly and I was pretty proud of how it turned out.  Lately I've been so focused on eating vegetables and trying to stay healthy that I haven't been much in the mood for cooking or baking.  I mean, if I bake something, I'm going to feel like I earned the right to eat it.  But in the interest of trying to use up the insane amount of grapes I had leftover from the last CSA pickup, I also decided to make a grape focaccia recipe I've had my eye on.  Grapes and focaccia?  It's actually a Tuscan thing and it is delicious:

 

Never before have I tried to make my own bread, but I reached way down to my Italian old lady roots and kneaded that dough like a genuine nonna.  It felt so good, I seriously considered opening a pizzeria for about 5 seconds.  Eh, I'm over it now.

Monday

The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.

They are at their windows
in every section of the tangerine of earth--
the Chinese poets looking up at the moon,
the American poets gazing out
at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.

The clerks are at their desks,
the miners are down in their mines,
and the poets are looking out their windows
maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,
and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved.

The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.

Which window it hardly seems to matter
though many have a favorite,
for there is always something to see--
a bird grasping a thin branch,
the headlights of a taxi rounding a corner,
those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.

The fishermen bob in their boats,
the linemen climb their round poles,
the barbers wait by their mirrors and chairs,
and the poets continue to stare
at the cracked birdbath or a limb knocked down by the wind.

By now, it should go without saying
that what the oven is to the baker
and the berry-stained blouse to the dry cleaner,
so the window is to the poet.

Just think--
before the invention of the window,
the poets would have had to put on a jacket
and a winter hat to go outside
or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.

And when I say a wall,
I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper
and a sketch of a cow in a frame.

I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,
the wall of the medieval sonnet,
the original woman's heart of stone,
the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.

-Billy Collins

The Dog

I want a dog. 

I had a labrador once, growing up.  Everyone thinks their dogs are the best, and I am no exception.  Look at this face and tell it that you do not think it's the best:

We called her Bella.  She liked spaghetti.  She was trained to not go past the point where the kitchen tile turned into the family room carpet.  She excelled at digging and barking and generally being a dog.  She lived to a ripe age of 13. 

Since then I haven't owned any pets, except briefly a cat.  She showed up outside our apartment door one day, mewing and looking pitiful.  We took her to get a bath and then to the vet.  If we were going to keep her, she would have to be an indoor cat.  Her name became Bacon:

Sadly, this arrangement couldn't last as it became clear that two of us were far too allergic.  Bacon was adopted by Russians.  Her name changed to Behkon, I like to think she sits on a pillow and eats caviar all day.

So, by process of elimination I am a dog person (I also eliminated fish, but that is a different story).  I hope to adopt a dog whenever I decide to become a real adult with a stable job and a yard.  In the meantime, I came across this poem written by Billy Collins, or rather by his deceased dog:

The Revenant

I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you--not one bit.

When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.

I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit in a chair to eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.

I would have run away,
but I was too weak, a trick you taught me
while I was learning to sit and heel,
and--greatest of insults--shake hands without a hand.

I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me
but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched.

You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.

The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you
was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.

While you slept, I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all of my strength
not to raise my head and howl.

Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place

except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner--
that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry, the cats and all the others in prose.