Friday Food Writers: W.S. Merwin

Yesterday came the great news that W.S. Merwin has been appointed our 17th poet laureate. I’ve loved Merwin since I was a teenager. There’s something ethereal about his work that persists even when he’s writing about very physical things, like he’s hovering above the earth. (You can read a review I wrote of one of his books for the New York Times about 10 years ago here.) Here’s a lovely poem that involves oysters and doom—a fine combination by anyone’s standards. Merwin is also a big environmentalist and you can read an essay, as well as a few more poems, about his garden and why he thinks it’s so important to safeguard the planet here.

In Time

The night the world was going to end

when we heard those explosions not far away

and the loudspeakers telling us

about the vast fires on the backwater

consuming undisclosed remnants

and warning us over and over

to stay indoors and make no signals

you stood at the open window

the light of one candle back in the room

we put on high boots to be ready

for wherever we might have to go

and we got out the oysters and sat

at the small table feeding them

to each other first with the fork

then from our mouths to each other

until there were none and we stood up

and started to dance without music

slowly we danced around and around

in circles and after a while we hummed

when the world was about to end

all those years all those nights ago

Friday Food Writers: A.J. Liebling

I’m back in Berlin, but in keeping with my week’s travels, I thought it was the perfect time to induct the legendary A.J. Liebling into my Friday food writers pantheon. Born in New York in 1904, Liebling was a journalist who eventually ended up writing for The New Yorker. He loved Paris, where he went for the first time at the age of three, and he adored food. The collection this is from, Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris, was given to me by David Shea, the chef and co-owner of applewood, who told me it’s his favorite book. In particular, I love how this passage captures the pleasure of sending extra food out to people you care for when you’re in the restaurant kitchen and they’re in the dining room. I had a few chances to do this at applewood and I always got a huge thrill out of it.

The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down. Each day brings only two opportunities for field work, and they are not to be wasted minimizing the intake of cholesterol. They are indispensable, like a prizefighter’s hours on the road…A good appetite gives an eater room to turn around in. For example, a nonprofessional eater I know went to the Restaurant Pierre, in the Place Gaillon, a couple of years ago, his mind set on a sensibly light meal: a dozen, or possibly eighteen oysters, and a think chunk of steak topped with beef marrow…But as he arrived, he heard Monsieur Pierre say to his headwaiter, “Here comes Monsieur L. Those two portions of cassoulet that are left–put them aside for him.”…M. Pierre is the most amiable of restaurateurs, who prides himself on knowing in advance what his friends will like. A client of limited appetite would be obliged either to forgo his steak or to hurt M. Pierre’s feelings. Monsieur L., however, was in no difficulty. He ate the two cassoulets, as was his normal practice; if he had consumed only one, his host would have feared that it wasn’t up to standard. He then enjoyed his steak. The oysters offered no problem, since they present no bulk.

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