Dean, Deluca
I always love reading the Acknowledgements at the end of Dean Young's books.
The list can include Fence, APR, Gettysburg Review,
Octopus, Paris Review, and Threepenny Review
− an assortment of publications that you would
normally assume represented at least three different poets of competing poetic
aesthetics. I don't think Primitive Mentor is my favorite Young
book (that might be elegy on toy piano, but I haven't read his early
books yet so I'm not sure). Junie thought that Primitive Mentor was
a bit darker than we expect from Young, and I thought it was somehow chattier
than elegy. There are plenty of chuckles to be had, of course . . .
this from Admissions Policy:
We thought we might be able to close
the school for people with pieces missing
for the summer but no one would graduate,
they wouldn't put on their black capes
and throw their mortarboards in the air.
More and more kept showing up, partially,
obviously worthy of admission. One
of our most promising freshmen didn't have a skull,
his brains held together by, you guessed it,
duct tape.
While I'm on Deans, I've received another Dean & Deluca catalog, this one
purportedly just in time for Mother's Day, assuming your mother likes $150 cakes
in the shape of a handbag and/or $500 tins of caviar. As with the $4,000
patio furniture in the Frontgate catalog, I'm always left wondering who buys
this stuff. Not that it isn't delicious-looking: the assortment of
12 scones ($65), the sour cream walnut coffee cake ($50), the 6-pound lamb crown
roast ($310). The catalog does tend to give me good (if artery-clogging)
ideas, though. Why spend $80 on a dozen bacon-wrapped scallops when I can
whip them out in 15 minutes for a fifth of that? I admit to liking the
charcuterie page, not that I ever eat sausage and ham outside of Spain, but I do
actually love that stuff. I've already told you the story of watching the
foundry guys in Spain packing whole Serrano hams in suitcases to bring home, but
now you can buy pretty much the same thing at latienda.com, so there's no need.
La Tienda actually has a much better assortment of authentic tapas, and at less
than half the price.
Well, I've eaten the last of my 4-day pasta. Time to make some paella, I
suppose. I have a little sausage and chicken left, some frozen giant
scallops, a handful of shrimp, and the usual (red peppers, artichokes,
fresh-frozen peas). I really have to ask Alejandro to send me more
saffron, though. Between the saffron that I use and the saffron I give to
friends, I'm getting to the end of what was once a good-sized plastic
treasure trove box of it.
See you tomorrow.