Thanksgiving 2004 : A Menu Poem For Kent Johnson

 

  Thanksgiving Dinner 2004

by Geoffrey Gatza

 A holiday poem series

 

 

Thanksgiving Dinner 2004 A holiday poem series

Geoffrey Gatza

BlazeVox [books] Buffalo, New York

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanksgiving Dinner  2004

uest of Honor

Kent ohnson  

 

 

 

Thanksgiving Menu 2004   guest of honor: Kent Johnson

 

st

1  Course Stir Fry of Scallops and Shiitake Mushrooms with Gingered Grits and Bacon Vinaigrette nd

2  Course Tomato consommé with an Alphabet of Vegetables garnished with a Ron Syllabub rd

3  Course Dungeness Crab Salad with Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette th

4  Course Hamachi with Edamame Puree, Spicy Grapefruit and Watermelon Radish Salad th

5  Course Seared Rare Ahi with a Plum Wine & Daikon Beurre Rouge Steamed Jasmine Rice th

6  Course Fire Roasted Rack of Lamb and Rosemary Demi–Glaze Sautéed Purple Artichokes and White Asparagus th

7  Course Asian Pear Trifle

 

Table of Contents Scallops.......................................................................................................................11 Shiitake Mushrooms ................... ....................................... ........................................ ......................................... .................................. ............. 12 Ginger Grits...............................................................................................................13 Bacon Vinaigrette...................................................................................................14

Tomato consom consommé mé ......... ................. ................. ................. ................. .................. ................. ................. ................. ................. ................. .......... 15 Alphabet of Vegetables........................................................................................16 Ron Syllabub..............................................................................................................17

Dungeness Crab .................. ...................................... ......................................... ......................................... ........................................ ........................18 18 Meyer Lemon ................. ...................................... ......................................... ........................................ ......................................... ............................. ........ 19

Hamachi......................................................................................................................20 Edamame ................... ....................................... ........................................ ........................................ ......................................... .................................... ............... 21 Spicy Grapefruit.......................................................................................................22 Watermelon Radish ................... ........................................ .......................................... ......................................... ................................. ............. 23

Rare Ahi ................... ....................................... ......................................... ......................................... ........................................ ...................................... .................. 24 Plum Wine .................... ......................................... ......................................... ........................................ ......................................... ................................ ........... 25

Fire Roasted Lamb.................................................................................................26 Rosemary...................................................................................................................27 Purple Artichokes...................................................................................................28 White Asparagus ................... ........................................ .......................................... .......................................... ...................................... ................. 29

Asian Pear Trifle......................................................................................................30

 

 

 

 

Thanksgiving Dinner 2004   "Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese." G.K.Chesterton

 

 

 

Scallops

The Triumph of Painting

The red blocks standing in a sterile white gallery counters the stark, cold emptiness of the blue boxes  bubbly splatters, molten glass and chromatic borders act like a window frame, keeping one away, out or in graceful environments seemingly less predictable than the fabricated aluminum drawings of broad leaf plants the thin air disarms the undulating viewers Plastic dinosaurs are clumped in a birdbath

The very conditions, that basic inhospitality and constant suspicion, that eventually enabled the emergence of a new art and the triumph of painting in America.

 

  Shiitake Mushrooms

 pungent works of art persist in musty new directions dark garnets one can touch a tickle of sweet acidity and a hint of roasty earth some decaying stacks of books on the floor heart and core of ages past touch their wicked little game —

rope cutting across wood

 

  Ginger Grits

epigram When I die and they bring my ashes to rest at Gary’s World of Miniatures roadside attraction We will pass their diminutive version of the Vietnam War Memorial, the Eiffel Tower, The Great Wall and the Pyramids, the Seattle Space Needle, the Sidney Opera House.... will wander past the United Nations building, and off by the "It’s a Small World" area sits the styrofoam model of the Vatican In the round area of St. Peter’s Square they will empty my ashes from the urn and my scattered form will be the very essence of americana

and in that moment may I find the great poets gone before - I will tell them Kent Johnson was my friend And you’d damn well better watch out

 

  Bacon Vinaigrette

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Francis Bacon

 

  Tomato consommé

I can see clearly now

 

 

Alphabet of Vegetables

Back on earth, Mr. O'Keefe is also engaged in more mundane forms of cost control. Professors are being cut. Poets, heaven forfend, are being made, reproduced, redundant :

Alan Asparagus Boris Beets Clara Carrots David Daikon Eric Endive Fredric Fennel Ginger Gourd Haricot Vert Iceberg Lettuce Japanese Eggplant Robert Kale Lemon Grass Morris Maize Kelley Nettles Jasper Onion Paula Pea Arron Qunice Ruby Radish

poemsaboutguns.blogspot.com/ L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E.blogspot.com/ postavant.blogspot.com/ avantgarde.blogspot.com/ quietude101.blogspot.com/ grumpyoldmn.blogspot.com/ dangerouspuppy.blogspot.com/ CompleteIdiotsGuidetoPoetry.blogspot.com/ winebeforeitstime.blogspot.com/ ilikebush.blogspot.com/ leafybob.blogspot.com/ alwaysgreener.blogspot.com/ paidwhatonesode.blogspot.com/ papertiger.blogspot.com/ kakapo-ssible.blogspot.com/ 100mattresses.blogspot.com/ magneticpoetrykit.blogspot.com/ danagioiasucks.blogspot.com/

Sarah Spinach Turnip Kettlebottom Ugandan Principal Vidalia Onion Jenny Wasabi Xai Yam Zucchini

idratherbebowling.blogspot.com/ myprettypony.blogspot.com/ listentome.blogspot.com/ thegreatgatsby.blogspot.com/ aquarrelwithourselves.blogspot.com/ poetryideathatwillhauntmylateryears.blogspot.com

 

  Ron Syllabub

"But since, ceteris paribus, no poet can afford to dispense with anything that may advance his design, it but remains to be seen whether there is, in extent, any advantage to counterbalance the Composition; 1850. loss of unity which attends it."  Edgar Allan Poe; The Philosophy of Composition; ‘[Yasusada] takes my breath away' Ron Silliman

O wild Kent Johnson, thou breath of Autumn's being,

your florida blue ink drives leaves auburn like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing sunsets with fighter jets climbing in the transparency of my dreams christ in concrete old pizza and ice everlasting unseen presence

ceteris paribus, god always coincides with my desires

 

  Dungeness Crab

"He lashed out and then deliberately pushed a poem into my face. The base of the poem struck me and cut my bottom lip. "At the same time he was repeatedly saying 'Why are you doing this? Why don't you just leave me alone?'" Another poet who was outside the club said he had no reason to react as he did. "In this situation he wasn't under any threat. The poet who he went for is the mildest-mannered poet," the US's Academy of Poetry quoted him as saying. A Scotland Yard spokesman told APR: "We are aware of the incident but no complaint has been made." On scene, Paul Valery, was quoted as saying, "the folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us."

 

  Meyer Lemon

Hibernaculum

It is not difficult to write poems in America: weaving baskets in a world of paper or plastic. It is difficult to get work, real work I mean something that will pay for the energy that will burn and keep us warm during winter.  Not difficult put words to anger and spout about how thetoadministration is to blame for 1 everything that is wrong – it is in the wrong   Knowing does not stop the calls the constant calls for money we  just do not have – when one is underemployed there is so much time  Not difficult to write poems when so much America is happening [ it is difficult to find someone for who  poetry will make one bit of difference in their daily life – summer days past ]

1 and

hang it all, I will not mention his name in my poem 

 

  Hamachi

 If you don't find God in in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further. Mahatma Gandhi

In the emerald blue silence of gamelan chimes

It came returned to me, stamped DECEASED fading ananda a mix of whatever happens to be around slipping into autumn bliss an ironic after-echo of issues raised by hammers, colliding

diminish diminish

 

  Edamame

 

 

Spicy Grapefruit

To Shine “That's a lot lot of tommyrot,” he says, with a broad, crafty smile. “All things considered; I’m certainly not a pacifist!”

 As the stocky servant who mimics his master, himself a clown, winds

up on the paths of all things criminal

as a fly to a frog, a frog to a snake, a snake to a bird, a bird to a Martian, and a Martian to a fly what amounts to a threnody of grief the mind shapes itself to the body, as a rain forever falling, a vapor ever rising

 

  Watermelon Water melon Radish

Watermelon radish and shiso salad 10 leaves of shiso, julienned 2 watermelon radishes, peeled, and sliced thin and julienned 1 cup half and half Salt to taste Toss julienne of shiso and watermelon radish in half and half. Season with salt. To Serve On a large plate, spread edamame puree over the base of the plate. Place two grapefruit segments in the center. Add 5 hamachi slices: alternating hamachi slices and grapefruit slices. Place small amount of candied turmeric over each piece of hamachi. Pour 2 Tablespoons of spicy grapefruit juice over plate. Garnish with spoonful of watermelon and shiso salad.

 

 

Rare Ahi

Of authorship, or the vacant face of email At a party Ethan Paquin asked me slyly, if I was Kent Johnson. I am not Kent and to prove so much I will say something stoopid tonight I probably shouldn’t tell this as I did not ask Ethan if I could put this here  but to balance I corresponded with Jullich thinking he was Bernstein go figure

 

  Plum Wine

The audience waits in a kind of hebetudinous fixation,

 perhaps astonished

at the perfectly sustained level of mediocrity

[… she is polyonymous; Hecate the Hetronym  protecting readings and dynasties from the quiet ramblings of brothers in love. ]

 

  Fire Roasted Lamb

Thread: A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested  

Ron Silliman Can’t get one past ole’ Kent Johnson arms and legs splay outwards Ron Silliman Kent Johnson Poetics List Administrator Ron Silliman Can’t get one past ole’ Kent Johnson

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  Rosemary

Remembrance

 

  Purple Artichokes

My Green Lantern Power Ring for Kent Johnson

Wonderland is for lucky girls and music takes a happy pill a dreary Wednesday we have entered the purple wetlands the smell is of cauliflower, subjective a steel gray pine tree in the sunset three shapes take form the states of matter, being and union a row boat in sand

 

  White Asparagus

St. Sebastian When he was finally discovered to be poet he was handed over to the Mauretanian archers, who tied him to a tree and shot him with arrows. They left him for dead on that tree. The widow St. Irene, horrified, took him down and tended to his prickly body. She kept an arrow as a artifact. As soon as Sebastian's health returned, he was pissed. He publicly challenged the Emperor to defend his preemptive military doctrines and poorly planned economic strategies. Sebastian, thus went into holy battle, armed with his poems and superpowers, he easily defeated the Emperors guards. And when the time came to slay the evil Emperor, Our Lord appeared and bade him to cease. He was captured and re-sentenced to death, this time by clubbing. After his second execution, his body was buried where San Sebastiano Library and Starbucks® now stand.

a grown, bearded man in court dress contains no trace of an arrow, yet

[the light had changed] foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. -Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Sebastian is protector of the

It was Renaissance artists who portrayed him as a  youth pierced by arrows, Sebastian was an older, 400 pound man in Normal, Ill.

vant Garde



 

Once, Sebastian used his healing abilities, to cure the prefect of Rome of gout, In appreciation he released the Christians under his persecution and thus converted.

 

  Asian Pear Trifle

After all, is the matter of nuclear omnicide and everything it implies in terms of our collective psyche a tamed and settled matter? I mean, who is the Author of Hiroshima? Doubled Flowering  stands,  stands, when all is said and done, as a work of troubled imagining— imagining what it might be to live and struggle through a fate that potentially awaits every human being.

 

 

 

  Real Name: Geoffrey Gatza Occupation: Crime-fighter, Poet Base of Operations: Buffalo, NY USA Marital Status: Single Height Weight::6'3" 195 lbs. Eyes: Blue Hair: Brown Birth date: Unknown Birth place: Unknown Title: None, acting for the Avant Garde Affiliation: Known to work with Belladonna, a rogue artist Family: Unknown Analysis: A mystery. Lack of background information.

Traces have turned up little of his life before his involvement with poetry. Vocal, forceful, enigmatic. Creative. Technically adept. Knowledgeable. Charismatic. Idealistic. Dangerous. Great potential – should investigate further. Hidden past may hold key to control.

 A prodigy who obtained obtained his Literature d degree egree while stil stilll in his teens, Geoffrey Geoffrey Gatza was a gifted poet, whose inability to work within the system led him outside of established literary circles. As the "Midnight Poet," Gatza used his great wealth, talent and formidable network of contacts to provide Avant Garde poetry for a wide range of readers for whom orthodox poetry had failed. While investigating the influx of a new and dangerous bio-mimetic languages, Gatza was infected with a mutagenic virus which interacted randomly with other chemicals in his bloodstream. As a result, Gatza lost his vision except while using special goggles of his own creation. Beatnik was one theoriginal strongest PoetsGatza’s on Earth until his untimely fall before Gatza. During a final confrontation withofthe Beatnik, power level was increased tenfold when his father, seemingly performing an act of good will before his death, bestowed Gatza with his superior mental powers. With his father's ability to project lifelike three-dimensional images and psionic energy beams the Nobel Prize seemed well within his reach. Recently, Gatza was committed to Subway™ Asylum following several violent mental breakdowns. While there he made fast friends with T.S. Eliot who was committed for acting like a cat and Ezra Pound. Shortly afterward, a confrontation with Eliot, Pound and Closed Verse left Gatza nearly dead. He retreated into his mind, seemingly lost forever in a coma. It has been speculated the energy Gatza received from his father was the catalyst for his insanity but this is not entirely true. Something else has been infecting his mind...something powerful. Gatza has dedicated himself to protecting the downtrodden of his city from a continuing series of deadly schemes by the insidious Iowa writers.

 

  Blaze Real Name: Blaise Occupation: Crime-fighter, former house cat Base of Operations: Buffalo, NY USA Height: 27 cm Weight: 15 lbs. Hair: Orange Marmalade Eyes: Yellow Birth Date: Unknown Birth Place: Debuke, Iowa  Affiliation: The Chinese Chinese Throwing Cats Family: Mother, 2 sisters Hobbies: Chess  Chess 

Once a 20th century house cat known as Blaise, assumed the role of Freedom Fighter after she saw her family killed by the arch criminal The Crow. Some time later, after wandering as a lone warrior she changed her identity to Blaze. Allying herself with Clarice during the Zero Second Crisis, she became a being of pure chronal energy. Since the Crisis she has mastered the timestream itself. In an effort to create the Universe in her image, Blaze traveled back in time to only moments before the Big Bang occurred. This was foiled when the original NEA was alerted and a battle ensued, Blaze fully aged Dana Gioia and murdered Formalist-Man, Dr. GoodMoral, and The Oracle. She has yet to be brought to justice for her crimes against humanity.

Clarice Name: Clarice Waldman   Age: 3 Height: 24 cm. Weight: 6 kg. Hair: White and Orange Eyes: Yellow Birth Date: Unknown Birth Place: Bombay, India  Affiliation: Avant Garde Family: No Living Relatives Hobbies: Chess  Chess  Analysis: A company cat. She will never betray Gatza or Analysis: A the Avant Garde. Believes in the artist way: All work no play. She keeps a clean slate and no hidden skeletons.

The daughter of evil villain Tiger King, Clarice joined the Avant Garde after her father was killed in battle with the Robert Frost and Robert Bly. Clarice’s superfeline body is laced with hidden cybernetic claws. She also carries a mango-staff given to her by her father, able to shoot spirals of electricity on command. She rarely leaves home and has never been officially spotted outside  Avant Garde headquaters.