Pisan Carrots 

Thanksgiving 2014 | A Menu Poem

Guest of Honor: You!

IntroductionIntroduction

Hello and welcome to the thirteenth incarnation of the Thanksgiving Menu-Poem. This year the guest of honor is you! Yes, you sitting right there reading this, I do mean you. Hip, hip hurray and thank you for your kind support, your wonderful nature, your continued love for poetry, your willingness to open your life to weird little books like the ones we make at BlazeVOX! Even if this is your first time here or this is your thirteenth thanksgiving with us, hurray and thank you for joining in on the fun of a Menu-Poem and I hope you enjoy the celebration.

Beginning in 2002 with a Menu-Poem to honor Charles Bernstein, I have continued this series of texts using a menu as the basis to honor prominent poets. Being a trained professional chef I wanted to blend my love of food and poetry into a book-length work that would fit within the ideas of Thanksgiving. In a feast of words, I wanted to honor poets who have meant many things to many readers in a form that could be presented to everyone. Over the years we have honored many fine poets, but last year we had a bit of a fiasco, a wonderful poet declined the Menu-Poem for very fine reasons. So to pick things back up, we decided it was best to dedicate this poem to you, the reader, and bring you in on all the fun. Hurray!

I would also like to take this opportunity, on a day of giving thanks, to say a special thank you to everyone who was kind enough to be there for me during this tumultuous year. I had a major health scare over the spring and summer, which you can read about on the BX blog. That is now a thing of the past and I am happy and healthy once again. The outpouring of support was something that made my wife Donna and I feel just grand. So to say ‘Hurray, I am still alive’ and to say thank you all, this Menu-Poem is dedicated to you.

This Menu-Poem differs just a touch from previous incarnations. In the past, each poem was set next to a course of a large dinner. This would be, for example, the soup course or main course with a line or two of text describing each menu item that would be served to accompany the forthcoming poem. This year, each poem is set next to a Taste Poem. Since some things cannot be spoken, some events surpass what the tool of language is able to provide, some things are just known to each of us on an individual level, these taste poems expound on what cannot be ingested by reading. The instructions are vey simple, to gather up the ingredients and eat them one at a time to enjoy their flavor, texture and sensuousness and then move on to the next item. Work your way through the lot of items and there you have it, a taste poem. Then move on to read the poem that is next to it, they are just poem poems and you are already up to speed on that, so hurray!

And one last bit of information for you before you begin reading. The cover art is a painting by Donna White. It is a portrait of our dear pumpkin from last year, as he was our 2013 Thanksgiving pumpkin. It was with us for over nine months and stayed around, until he turned to pulp in late August of this year. There is a poem for him in this grouping, which I do hope you enjoy. We do miss him terribly and his silly face.

Hurray and Happy Thanksgiving

Rockets, Geoffrey

Thanksgiving 2014 a Menu Poem by Geoffrey Gatza

Table of Taste Poems

The Magic of Sunshine on White Metal

On A Raft Blown By The Wind

I offer my thoughts on the continued silence of the dead

To all the trees lost in war, I lift my arms and open my shirt
as if in tithing myself to the falling rain. I offer my open sores,
hoping for a holy purification, or a deadly infection
so that my days of regret and pain shall pass by as easily
as the storm clouds above.

The sleepwalker, now knee-deep in snow, dreams he is transformed
into a landed meteorite, set in place, planted, as an onion in a farmer’s field.

You disappeared like a hole enveloped by water

The orange plumes of everydayness
have nothing more to give,
Ever since the plum days have past.

To be placed on the menu of my last meal

Table of Poem Titles

Earth Revolves Itself Once Again

Resplendence

I’m OK now; I must have eaten something that disagreed with me.

Watching last year’s pumpkin transcend determinism

Mine is the Sunlight

Henry Darger Dreams of Emily Dickinson

We Are Here