‘She confronts the monsters in herself’

One of the things to love about Glück’s poetry is that, while her work contains many emotional registers, she is not afraid to be cruel — she confronts the monsters in herself, and in others, not with resignation and therapeutic digression but with artery-nicking knives.

The poet Kay Ryan, in her terrific new book of essays, “Synthesizing Gravity,” writes: “I think it’s good to admit what a wolfish thing art is; I trust writers who know they aren’t nice.” Glück’s work is replete with not-niceness. You would not, you sense, want her as an enemy.

I’m reading the Kay Ryan book currently (and it is terrific), and I was happy last month to read of Glück winning the Nobel Prize. In this blog, way back, I liked to pretend she was an enemy, testing me with that cruelty. Years later, a big book of her work sits on my shelves. She won our non-existent battle. She’s too tough for me, by a mile.

Remember Cereal Bowl?

The cereal restaurant this blog followed for an extensive period of time? The one that was good at its mission but unfortunately existed in a neighborhood without a lot of college kids?

I’m sorry to report to you, many years belatedly, that the Cereal Bowl has closed. And so has the Starbucks that opened in the Cereal Bowl’s place. And so has the Chipotle that opened in the Starbucks’ place. And, as of this month, so has the Tino’s Pizzeria that opened in the Chipotle’s place.

First haircut in eight months

The place I’d been going to in my neighborhood had closed for good at the beginning of the pandemic. So for my first cut in eight months – the length of my hair had gone from exploratory to worse – I went to a barbershop that’s been operating in different spots in Foggy Bottom for six decades. My dad’s long-time barber had ended up there. I couldn’t go on a day that barber was there, so I asked for whoever was available. The barber I got had been cutting hair for many decades as well, and he did a great job. The haircut made my day, and later reading this story about the shop and its history made my hour.

Missing art exhibits

We saw this Norman Rockwell one in 2019 when it came through the GWU Museum. The exhibit had so many of the early paintings that made him famous, but then came his later work, taking on race (the Ruby Bridges painting is even more stunning in person) and war, and that work led into modern takes by a beautiful mix of 21st-century artists, taking his quietly challenging American vision even further. I miss art exhibits and I miss where the best ones carry you.

Missing pasta right now

Probably because it’s the middle of the afternoon.

From Roxane Gay: “Like I was a necessary thread among other necessary threads. Like I had found that essential truth. Like I was in a place that could become part of what I need home to be.”

About pesto alfredo: “I fell in love with pasta after reading about an Italian witch. It was 1994, and Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola was hot on the Reading Rainbow circuit.”

About Buca di Beppo: “The atmosphere was always raucous, the platters of food were so massive that they demanded sharing, and ogling at the sundry black-and-white photos of Italian wrestlers and spaghetti-eating contests that crowded the walls was as much a part of the experience as the actual dining.”

I really enjoyed this Red Sauce issue.

A cousin in the NYT

I was very happy to hear my cousin Nic and his dance troupe starred in a Times article this fall. There’s even a picture of him! I’m a proud cousin.

“In their first moments onstage, several masked dancers stood silently in a circle and raised their arms, fingertips nearly meeting but not quite, an apt metaphor for the evening’s reconvening.”

(Yes, this blog has been gone for months. I’ve been thinking about what to do with it.)

On playing the piano

I’m finding every Christoph Niemann one-screen-at-a-time pieces for the Times makes me some kind of happy. This time he is learning to playing the piano while stuck at home, and it is difficult for him. I took three piano lessons from a Groupon once and enjoyed myself but had no piano at home. Later we bought a house that contained a piano but there was not really room for the piano. My wife has a piano at her parents’ house, awaiting her someday when we have time for a piano. I look forward to retirement or the return of the experience-coupon era, whichever comes first.

More pasta geometry

A long time ago in this blog, I posted some of my favorite lines from The Geometry of Pasta. I still take the book off the shelf from time to time to learn what a pasta name means… or just to find a shape that pushes my brain in a different way. So, I loved The Strategist’s recent “Fancy Pasta Shapes, Ranked.”

“Springy Sicilian pasta coils that dangle like your grandma’s old landline cord.”

“In addition to knots, they look like little spaceships, or a Frenchwoman’s advanced scarf-tying technique, and trap sauce with wild abandon.”

“Not gnocchi as you know it, but puffy Pac-Man-like shells….”

Never been more ready to play, today

One of the more moving musical performances for me during the pandemic has been John Fogerty singing and playing with his kids, with his wife apparently behind the camera, in our Tiny Desk Home Concerts series. He sounds great, and the kids play well. And they are all stuck at home, and his best wishes to the rest of us are most sincere. When he plays Centerfield, you’ve heard the song a million times, but you’ve never experience its yearning quite so much.