Bread & Poetry ~February 13, 2017~

Hello, Loves— One of the perks of being a grain geek is that when people travel, they often bring me grains from around the world. A friend had the good fortune of covering the Slow Food Terra Madre in Italy as a journalist this year and she returned home with a bag of polenta. I simmered it long and slow for several hours in whey and it makes for a fragrant, floral addition to my mama bread. This week, in place of a poem I’m sharing an essay that speaks to what is happening in the world today. It … Read more

When She Returns From the Underworld

I handed him a loaf of bread and he made a joke about orgasm. That’s because to him, bread is pleasure…and shame. For the past year, he’s been Paleo. He dropped fifty pounds and started lifting weights. He feels better than he’s ever felt. Wheat had become the enemy, and he was hitting the streets to preach the word. He’s now a man married devoutly to protein, he assured me. He would only sneak bread on the side. Later that day, he sent me a private picture of himself stuffing a piece of toast into his mouth with a … Read more

Slowly, I Rise

This is a guest post by Claudia F. Savage   In the years before the birth of my daughter, River, I had serious insomnia. The only thing that calmed me was baking my mother’s wheat bread, the first recipe I knew from memory. In the starlit cold of the Colorado mountains, I shuffled to the dark pantry, pulled out whole wheat flour, honey, yeast, and my largest cream-colored bowl, its soft glow the only light on the way to the counter. The act of stirring and kneading a known rhythm, a balm, in the still dark. The bread didn’t … Read more

Bread & Poetry~ week of September 26th to October 2nd

Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in … Read more

Bread & Poetry~ week of September 19th to September 25th

Mistaken Identity by Tony Hoagland I thought I saw my mother in the lesbian bar with a salt gray crew cut, a nose stud and a tattoo of a parrot on her arm. She was sitting at a corner table, leaning forward to ignite, on someone’s match, one of those low-tar things she used to smoke, and she looked happy to be alive again after her long marriage to other people’s needs, her twenty-year stint as Sisyphus, struggling to push a blue Ford station wagon full of screaming kids up a mountainside of groceries. My friend Debra had brought … Read more