Monday, September 30, 2019
Daily Dose
From A New Life, by Bernard Malamud
HABIT
"'Why speak of regrets? I have none.'
'Your eyes seem sad.'
'The fix of habit. I'm happy.'"
From page 200 this edition
Sunday, September 29, 2019
Daily Dose
From Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman
WALT
"Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,
Disorderly fleshy and sensual... eating drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist... no stander above men and women or apart from them...
no more modest than immodest."
From page 40, this edition
Saturday, September 28, 2019
Daily Dose
From The Samurai, by Shusaku Endo, translated by Van C. Gessel
ALL
"We were all disheartened. We were like a wandering tribe that trails day after day across the desert in search of an illusive spring of flowing water."
From Chapter 8
Friday, September 27, 2019
Clerihew for the molecular Gastronome
GRANT ACHATZ
Grant Achatz
Uses powders and packets,
Balloons, bubbles, and spheres
To smoke his peers.
.
Daily Dose
AS
"As a writer, must I write a hopeful story? Or an evolving one?"
From The Tellurian
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Clerihew for a Mad Food Scientist
WYLIE DUFRESNE
Given free rein
Wylie Dufresne
crashed molecular gastronomy
Into the market economy.
Daily Dose
From On the Move: A Life, by Oliver Sacks
TABLE
"Our table had a paper tablecloth, and when points were obscure, we drew diagrams on it until their meaning was fully explored."
From A New Vision of the Mind
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Clerihew for a Literary Arsonist
DALE PECK
Dale Peck
Sticks out his neck
Every time he takes up his pen
And then he does it over again.
Daily Dose
ASIDE
"Philosophy aside, an effectual help towards disregarding death is to think of those who clung greedily to their lives."
From 50
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Clerihew for an English Master
V. S. PRITCHETT
To reclaim its glory,
The English short story
Needed a champ which it
Found in Victor Sawdon Pritchett.
Daily Dose
CHANCE
"If he's had that chance, things would be very different for him now. For a moment he thought he couldn't think what things; then he found he could conceive the things exactly, and exactly how they'd differ from the things he'd got, too."
From Chapter 18
Monday, September 23, 2019
The Joy of Clerihew
IRMA S. ROMBAUER
Irma S. Rombauer
Loved that whole flour,
Canned soup and fruit cocktail,
And recipes from retail.
Daily Dose
From I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, by Nora EphronFACT
"The fact that I am not currently in pain and cannot simulate the pain of labor does not mean I don't remember it. I am currently not eating a wonderful piece of grilled chicken I once had in Asolo, Italy, in 1982, but I remember it well. It was delicious."
From On Maintenance
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Daily Dose
ENDED UP
"We ended up with dancing men in top hats and tails, a full Welsh choir, and a British regimental band playing along loudly."
From Chapter 18, Bright Side Returns
Saturday, September 21, 2019
Daily Dose
REALLY
"Really, had this been necessary? But that, I thought, was my old friend."
From Chapter 3.
Friday, September 20, 2019
Daily Dose
From Collected Novels and Plays, by James Merrill
PLANT
"Within her range of vision stood a plant that had stalks covered with pink bristles, and big triangular leaves, greeny brown, each of which seemed to have split open to reveal a jagged form, membranous and pink. It wasn't a plant she would have chosen for display in a hospital. Now I'll be sick, she thought."
From The Seraglio, Chapter 15
Thursday, September 19, 2019
Daily Dose
From The Changing Light at Sandover, by James Merrill
SUNDAY
"A Sunday hush. Table uncleared. Grandmother
About to take her pill in trembling water
Cocks her head: 'An angel's passing over...'
Seeing nothing, each looks at the other."
From Mirabell: Book 9, 9-5
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
Daily Dose
From The Tanners, by Robert Walser, translated by Susan BernofskyHABIT
"'I was always in the habit,' Hedwig said to Simon in the course of the day, 'of treating you somehow as my subordinate. In their dealings with you, perhaps others do, too --you hardly give an impression of intelligence -- what people are more likely to see in you is love, and you know pretty well how that's received.'"
From Chapter 10
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
Clerihew for a Lyonnais
JACQUES PEPIN
When Jacques Pepin
At Le Pélican began,
There it was, so to speak,
He first learned La Technique.
Daily Dose
From The Assistant, by Robert Walser, translated by Susan BernofskyOTHER
"In some other place and at some other hour, all this would perhaps have struck him as agreeable, instructive, nice, fine, amusing, even enchanting."
from page 143, this edition
Monday, September 16, 2019
Daily Dose
From No Spare Time: Thinking About What Matters, by Ursula K. Le Guin
SILENCE
"Silence. Affable presence. Mystery."
From Pard and the Time Machine, May 2014
Sunday, September 15, 2019
Daily Dose
PRESENTLY
"I presently felt that this landscape was not, after all, doing itself full justice."
From James Pethel
Saturday, September 14, 2019
Daily Dose
THEY
"They raised themselves on their elbows, compelled by the earnestness of his voice and the gleam in his eye.
'Yes? We're listening,' they said, expectantly."
From Chapter 21
Friday, September 13, 2019
Daily Dose
ONLY
"Only the superfluous is sordid."
From Chapter 2, 4
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Daily Dose
REFUSED
"She refused to discuss the subject, and he could not blame her for this, since he could scarcely bear to think of it himself."
From Chapter Fourteen
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Clerihew for the Boston Cooking School
FANNIE MERRITT FARMER
Fannie Farmer
Strapped on the armor
Of proper terms and careful measures
And produced an American treasure.
Clerihew de cuisine
AUGUSTE ESCOFFIER
If today
Escoffier
Wrote Ma Cuisine
There would be much less gelatine.
Clerihew in a Tall Toque
PAUL BOCUSE
Paul Bocuse
Paid his dues
Long before nouvelle cuisine
Ever really made the scene.
Daily Dose
From Joseph Anton: A Memoir, by Salman Rushdie
THANKS
"Thanks to Zafar, he had grown fond of Mario the plumber and his brother Luigi, and sometimes Super Mario World felt like a happy alternative to the one he lived in the rest of the time. 'Read a good book,' his wife told him scornfully. 'Give it up.' He lost his temper. 'Don't tell me how to live my life,' he exploded, and she made a grand exit."
From Chapter IV, The Trap of Wanting to Be Loved
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Daily Dose
From New York Stories, edited by Diana Secker Tesdell
CHARM
"Her supreme charm was the simplicity that comes of taking it for granted that people are born with carriages and country places: it never occurred to her that such congenital attributes could be matter for self-consciousness, and she had none of the nouveau riche prudery which classes poverty with the nude in art and is not sure how to behave in the presence of either."
From A Cup of Cold Water, by Edith Wharton
Monday, September 9, 2019
Daily Dose
From Russian Stories, edited by Christoph Keller
!!!
"'We're done for!' I hollered, seized by the exhilaration of disaster. 'We're finished!'"
From Dolgushov's Death, by Isaac Babel, translated by Peter Constantine
Sunday, September 8, 2019
Daily Dose
NONE THE LESS
"None the less, December was not a success for Naples."
From The Gentleman from San Francisco, by Ivan Bunin, translated by S. S. Koteliansky, D. H. Lawrence, and Leonard Woolf
