Thursday, August 8, 2013

The Gentleman's Relish


What do you relish?

35 comments:

deborah said...

The color orange.

Anonymous said...

Can't resist...

Why I Am Not a Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."

"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

--Frank O'Hara

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

What do I relish?

I supposed I relished things I couldn't do in moderation.

I relish a meal with company in conversations that do not sit still while I do. They are marvelous.

Freeman Hunt said...

On toast?

Goat cheese with fig jam.

chickelit said...

I relish the wisekraken.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

The color orange.

My mother, step mother, back in the mid 70s, bought these bright colors aluminum bowls with matching cups. She allowed us to pick the color we wanted but I cant remember what color I ended up with.

I only have the strong impression of the bright colors.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

The gentleman's relish.

The cigar gentleman. I remember those when I was a kid. They drank coffee, smoked cigars and wore a chacabana.



sakredkow said...

Up to your old Frank O'Hara tricks again, eh, creeley23?

Good poem. I remember it from my little collection, the name of which is escaping me.

Palladian said...

creeley23 said... "Can't resist...

Why I Am Not a Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."...


Mike Goldberg was teaching at my school when I was a student in the 1990s, and when I became a teacher there in 2005, he was still teaching.

I never took his class when I was a student, but as far as I could tell, his classes consisted of him smoking cigars and talking about his Ferrari. Interesting guy, the last of the abstract expressionists.

ndspinelli said...

I relish pasta. As my old man would say, "For an Italian, pasta is not food, it's oxygen." I never tire of it. Being diabetic, I only eat it once or twice a week.

I do like a good natural casing hot dog w/ coarse ground mustard and a nice dill[not sweet!] homemade pickle relish.

AllenS said...

Depends on what you're talking about. Most of the time, nothing more than salt and pepper is needed.

sakredkow said...

I relish a beautiful woman.

sakredkow said...

Someone known to me.

Trooper York said...

I relish alone time with my wife. We seldom get enough of it because when we go out everybody wants to join the party.

But when we do...it is sweet relish.

deborah said...

Lem, I always thought those metal cups were cool. I didn't know they were called anodized aluminum.

Creeley, I'm not sophisticated enough to appreciate O'Hara, I think. Also the Neruda one about plums :)

deborah said...

lol I don't blame them, Troop. You going on another cruise any time?

Trooper York said...

The week of Labor weekend. Best part about it is that it is hurricane season.

Let me explain.

It starts in New York and goes to Florida. People can get off the boat to go to Disney World but we will just stay at the pool and get massages and stuff like that. Then if there is a hurricane and it can't go to the Bahamas I get all my money back.

That would be sweet.

Trooper York said...

The last two nights we went out for dinner and both times the owner of the restaurant sat down at our table to talk and drink for an hour.

It was fun but you know. I need my relish.

Anonymous said...

Raw honey on a homemade gluten free pumpkin, walnut chocolate chip scone and a cup of Kenya Peaberry coffee with cream.

Darcy said...

Kisses. And crunchy peanut butter.

deborah said...

That does sound like a good deal, Troop.

Michael Haz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

When I can manage to get my teenage son to sit around a act goofy with me cracking jokes and being silly is the first thing I truly relish. Second is the aroma of garlic browning in a pan with olive oil and butter. Just a smell, but oh! what a smell! It screams "Something good is on the way!"

deborah said...

The scent of Russian sage.

roger said...

on the right track.

need some of my homemade sourdough bread however. and some homemade huckleberry jam. like we mormons out west make it.

Methadras said...

A gentlemen relishes long, uninterrupted sleep. Amongst many other things.

Icepick said...

A gentlemen relishes long, uninterrupted sleep. Amongst many other things.

Yeah, but what do YOU relish?

Anonymous said...

Mike Goldberg was teaching at my school when I was a student in the 1990s, and when I became a teacher there in 2005, he was still teaching.

Cool.

Recently I found a 15 minute Youtube of O'Hara a few months before his unfortunate death at the age of 40 after being hit by a dune buggy.

Aside from his prominent forehead and aquiline nose, O'Hara was hardly an imposing figure. He was a small, almost nerdy guy with with a nasal voice, who would not have looked out of place at a science fiction convention.

Yet with his intelligence, humor and charm plus, I would say, love he was a central figure of the New York art scene. When people in those circles were invited to parties, they would ask, "Will Frank be there?" When O'Hara lay dying in the hospital, people rushed to his side, and de Kooning, the painter, demanded to pay all of O'Hara's bills.

Some years later, his friends put together and published a volume, "Homage to Frank O'Hara," a delightful scrapbook of memoirs, photos, and reproductions about O'Hara. That doesn't happen as a matter of course.

And it wasn't because he was a great poet, though he was. People didn't quite realize it at the time because they were distracted by his personality and the informality of his work -- the little of it they saw, because he published shockingly few poems in his lifetime. Everyone was surprised by the thickness of his Collected Poems when it came out.

Long ago, while we were browsing the college library, a friend thrust that O'Hara volume into my hands and changed my life.

Anonymous said...

Mike Goldberg was teaching at my school when I was a student in the 1990s, and when I became a teacher there in 2005, he was still teaching.

Cool.

Recently I found a 15 minute Youtube of O'Hara a few months before his unfortunate death at the age of 40 after being hit by a dune buggy.

Aside from his prominent forehead and aquiline nose, O'Hara was hardly an imposing figure. He was a small, almost nerdy guy with with a nasal voice, who would not have looked out of place at a science fiction convention.

Yet with his intelligence, humor and charm plus, I would say, love he was a central figure of the New York art scene. When people in those circles were invited to parties, they would ask, "Will Frank be there?" When O'Hara lay dying in the hospital, people rushed to his side, and de Kooning, the painter, demanded to pay all of O'Hara's bills.

Some years later, his friends put together and published a volume, "Homage to Frank O'Hara," a delightful scrapbook of memoirs, photos, and reproductions about O'Hara. That doesn't happen as a matter of course.

And it wasn't because he was a great poet, though he was. People didn't quite realize it at the time because they were distracted by his personality and the informality of his work -- the little of it they saw, because he published shockingly few poems in his lifetime. Everyone was surprised by the thickness of his Collected Poems when it came out.

Long ago, while we were browsing the college library, a friend thrust that O'Hara volume into my hands and changed my life.

bagoh20 said...

I relish two things that people would normally think of as bad: hunger & exhaustion.

I really love to be hungry, like on those days when I've just been too busy to stop and eat all day so that it's been maybe 24 hours since my last meal. Then going out to dinner, knowing I've earned it, I need, and I have plenty of room for it. The anticipation is wonderful, and the eating a sublime pleasure at that point. Almost anything is delicious, but if it's also really good then it's just orgasmic with every bite.

I also love to be exhausted after a hard day of activity, be it work or play. It's just a really relaxing, satisfied feeling.

These may feel so good because they wash away any feeling of guilt related to either gluttony or sloth while fully justifying the practice of either. It makes a sin into a reward well earned.

Chip Ahoy said...

A gentleman's relish would be chutney.

A nearby Japanese restaurant used to serve the most interesting relishes but now they do not. Domo. I don't even know why I brought them up, except possibly to get out my resentment about that.

Used to be, you'd sit down on these cushioned stumps and be served a plate sectioned off with little piles of strange and wonderful things, alien flavors that caused confusion and delight in the mouth and now all you get is soba. Four pages of confusing menu that amounts to various selections and deals revolving around soba.

But it's still an interesting restaurant wanttoseeitokaygoeslikethis dink.

And the guy who owns it is a Japanese food-Nazi. No soy sauce for you! He's totally against adding soy sauce to his masterpieces and flat does not allow it.

So now two reasons not to go.

I lied. Their menu is better than I remembered. No wait. Too confusing. Too many steps. What menu has step 1 step 2 step 3, that's bullshit, I meant to say poopoogerts.

That's what I was talking about, though, all those little relishes in ramekins shown on their new menu. Warning PDF

relish vs chutney

There seems to be no agreement because there is no agreement in definitions so they cannot even get started to compare.

So here goes, the Chip Ahoy comparison.

Chutney is fruit that is cooked and can be puréed or chunky, sugar and vinegar, so a gastrique, and heavily spiced. I think of it as being warm or room temperature, and cooked in its own pectin as jam or preserves

Relish implies cold but not necessarily, can also include sugar and vinegar, can be cooked or raw fruit or vegetable, possibly anaerobically fermented in brine or marinated in acid solution. And you think of little bits of crunchy vegetables possibly cut julienned. Delightful little piles of tasty tidbit vegetables, that's relish, a small side-dish, not something you'd fill up on.

Joe Schmoe said...

Marmite.

Just kidding. I hate that shit.

chickelit said...

bagoh20 said...
I relish two things that people would normally think of as bad: hunger & exhaustion.

You may have relished fighting on the German side in the Battle of Stalingrad:

We still have two machine guns and 400 rounds of ammunition. One mortar and ten shells. Besides that, only hunger and fatigue.

Methadras said...

Icepick said...

A gentlemen relishes long, uninterrupted sleep. Amongst many other things.

Yeah, but what do YOU relish?


Long, uninterrupted sleep. Sometimes I'm an insufferable insomniac. The longest wakeful stint I had lasted 7 days and when I crashed and burned I slept for nearly 3 days straight. Enough to get up to the bathroom, jam some food in my mouth for a few bites, and then crash again. Horrible.

I also relish being close to the one I love the most in all the world. My wife.

Anonymous said...

Intermittent Fasting or Fast Five. Eat in a five hour window daily. Fast the rest of the day, eating is truly sublime when very very hungry. I often eat in a two hour window, and fast the rest of the 22 hours. It feels great not to worry about what to eat or not eat for the rest of the day.