Welcome to the Poetry & Biscuits newsletter!

June 2024

Hello Dear Reader,

I am so grateful to you for joining me here. Though I have lots of ideas, I am not yet sure the shapes this monthly newsletter will take, but I hope it gives each of you a little something to savor. I am writing this on a Sunday having just finished post-farmers market brunch on the porch amid a light rain shower of fern leaves. The back garden is already a summery jungle, and some of the afternoon will be spent trying to tame it back a little, to uncover the stone walking paths at least. But, the challenge is always to do so without losing the lush splendor that makes it a joy to walk and sit within it. It’s so hard to cut back life and beauty. Just as pruning in order to encourage growth has always seemed like such a contradictory and difficult idea to me. It’s much like editing a poem, though I am a much more ruthless editor than I am as a gardener.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of the lyrical line. I’m reading Jorie Graham’s To 2040  at the same time as Anne Carson’s Wrong Norma, which offers two very different approaches to the form a poem can take. The taught precision of the line is the defining form of Graham’s work while Carson pushes against an undefinable space, indulging prose or the white space of the page at will. As a writer, I’ve found myself throughout my career moving between both approaches. The control of the line, its enjambment, and its turns seem fitting for poems in a time of crisis. While the “wrong” lyricism of a prose poem opens up to meditation and investigation. At the same time, the line is also one of the defining features of the garden. The exacting haiku of the Japanese garden, where even a design made to look natural is extremely unwild in its structural attention. Or, the rambling of the prairie garden that stretches its lines to the limit. My garden, like my own work, has become a place to balance those desires.

I’ve also been listening to Kim Gordon’s new album The Collective, which offers its own approach to the lyrical line in the form of a list. I’ve always been a list maker, so I am sympathetic to this approach, and it speaks directly to a collaborative project I’ve been working on with the artist/composer/performer Joseph Clayton Mills, some of the text of which I’ll share here as this month’s extract. In addition to thinking about lines, I’ve been thinking about bridges (composed of many, many lines), and so when I was offered the chance to participate in an art show this summer at The Plan with a theme of symmetry and all its paradoxes, I knew it was a chance to spend more time with bridges and all their possible meanings and forms. And, for this, I knew the line and its architecture would be essential as a structuring device, but I found myself also relying on the rhythm of the list and how its repetitions and clipt voice drive the line. (Though in this case, my lists are drawn from the many ways a bridge can fail.)

With that in mind, here’s an excerpt from “Sypher,” which will premiere as a video installation at The Plan Gallery in Chicago (600 N. Albany), opening on July 5th.

The Original Poetry & Biscuits Biscuits Recipe

As a thanks to you, my early newsletter subscribers, I’d like to offer a special treat for this month’s recipe: the original biscuit recipe for the Poetry & Biscuits reading series. When I started the series in my house 15 years ago, I was much less comfortable with dough. The idea of making a biscuit dough that would have the integrity to be cut with a biscuit cutter seemed intimidating, so for the first several years the biscuits were drop biscuits. This is that recipe, adapted from one my mother gave me. Just like today’s biscuit recipe it is imminently adaptable. You can add cheese, herbs, and/or chilies to the base and make it as savory as you’d like. Or, these simple biscuits are the perfect foundation for celebrating the last of this spring’s strawberries with some whipped cream. Either way: enjoy!

Poetry & Drop Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

¼ cup butter cut into tablespoon-sized pieces

1 cup milk

½ cup sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine dry ingredients, followed by the butter and milk. Mix (on medium speed if using a standing mixer) to make a sticky dough. Layer two sheet pans with parchment and spoon heaping tablespoons of dough onto the pan leaving about 2 inches between each biscuit. Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden.

Poetry & Biscuits Reading Calendar

If you’re in Chicagoland, join us for upcoming Poetry & Biscuits readings!

July 12: Diego Baex, Daniel Borzutzky, Paula Cisewski, and Natalie Eilbert

September 13: Readers to come

November 15: Readers to come

If you or someone you know has a new book and is looking for a Chicago reading, we are always happy to hear suggestions!

Thank you again for reading! Here’s a happy cat (Lion-o)! 

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