September 19, 2010
With the release reading for In Their Cups: An Anthology of Poems about Drinking Places, Drinks, and Drinkers just around the corner (and by “just around the corner” I mean Sunday, September 26th, at 3 pm, at the almighty Open Books), I wanted to prime the proverbial poetic drunken pump with a couple choice selections from said book. To get things started, much like the book itself gets started, here’s Keats’ rollicking reverie to his favorite bar, the Mermaid Tavern. It’s somehow weirdly (well, maybe it’s not weird–what do you 
think, bar lovers?) reassuring to me that Keats had a favorite drinking spot in the early 1800s that he wrote about, and by his writing I think I might have enjoyed sitting there with pals having pints (and the occasional Dog’s Nose, as they did at the time). So, take a step back with Mr. Keats before all this internet-y-ness, when folks actually did their talking and drinking face-to-face.
Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host’s Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.
I have heard that on a day
Mine host’s sign-board flew away,
Nobody knew whither, till
An astrologer’s old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story,
Said he saw you in your glory,
Underneath a new old-sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac.
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
— Lines on the Mermaid Tavern, John Keats
August 6, 2010
Dorothy Sayers isn’t an author I’ve read a lot of, even though she’s a mystery grande dame, whatever that means. I think it’s cause I don’t like her name (well, honesty hurts), or that having a love for one English drawing room mystery writer is enough (and I’m a Christy guy). All of which is stupid, cause not only have I enjoyed the few stories of hers that I’ve read, but she also wrote the poems, translated the divine Divine Commedia, was a generally nice lady, and her most well-known sleuth’s name is Lord Peter Wimsey. Lord Peter Wimsey is a fantastic name. So, Dorothy, here’s to me finally taking the plunge with you in a larger way, starting with this quote from her story “The Queen’s Square,” a quote I give to you cause it’s about gin and the youth of today (or everyday) who can’t get enough of that juniper stuff.
“You could,” retorted the old lady, “if you looked after your stomach and your morals. Here comes Frank Bellingham–looking for a drink, no doubt. Young people today seem to be positively pickled in gin.”
–Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Queen’s Square”
June 25, 2010
These days, everyone wants to go Hollywood (welcome to Hollywood, what’s your dream). Or is it Bollywood? I get confused now and again. Of course, I also picture Hollywood as filled with Carole Lombards and not a bunch of over-tanned floozies, so I may be a little out of touch. But no matter, because either way you serve it up, Wine Cocktails is making a summertime hit in the land of lovelies. Not via a Greyhound bus tour, as you might expect, but via a very nice article entitled “Cocktails bring the beach home” that was in the O.C. Register. The article, by the witty and friendly Cathy Thomas, isn’t just about the W.Cs., but does have a lot of drinks from it, as well as quotes from yours truly. So, why not transport yourself by going and reading it. Right now. Or very soon after now.
PS: I fully realize that Hollywood isn’t in the O.C. But how much fun would we have just had in the above paragraph if I would have started it by saying “These days, everyone wants to go to Santa Ana?” Not nearly as much.
June 11, 2010
Though this book was eventually (and is, I suppose) better known as The Gracie Allen Murder Case, and made into a movie of the same name (starring, wouldn’t cha know, Gracie Allen), I love it that my copy is still called The Scent of Murder. Called such because at least three characters work in a perfume factory. I also love that the crime solver is named Philo Vance (played in the movies of course by William Powell, who plays a cocktailing and high class mystery solver better than anyone), and that he’s a bit of a dandy, though tough, too, but with a thoroughly rich, East-Coast-or-English, knows-his-wines-and-colorful-waistcoats-way about him. Really, though people die, this is a somewhat lightly and bubbly read. All that alone would lead to me wanting to drop this quote down for you. However, the real reason is that I think it should inspire you to sip some Chartreuse this weekend (I can’t think of better advice to give).
We had finished our coffee and were sipping our Chartreuse when Sergent Heath, looking grim and bewildered, appeared at the door leading from the main dining room to the veranda, and strode quickly to our table.
–S.S. Van Dine, The Scent of Murder
May 28, 2010
After the longish (or just plain long) Tom Waits post below, I thought I’d slip in a short couple of quotes from a book that almost echoes Waits (a book which is definitely the inspiration for the “ethics” scene in the Coen brothers’ film Miller’s Crossing, too), in that there are some shady and weird characters and everyone ends sad, dead, or drunk–a book called Kill and Tell. The first one’s about going into a bar, and the second about drinking at home (cause I wanted to cover the bases).
The bar was a fine old piece of imitation mahogany, and there was a fine old imitation Irishman in a white coat behind it.
We lifted our glasses to each other; the wine was cool and dry. I kept refilling our glasses while we ate, and when Jake brought the coffee Catherine asked him for some brandy. We were celebrating; each of us understood that.
“I think I’m drunk,” she told me.
“I’m drunk, too,” I said.
—Kill and Tell, Howard Rigsby
May 18, 2010
Maybe, just maybe, you live on a block of drinking poetry readers. If so, you’re lucky (and maybe sleepy, too, as poetry and drinking combined lead some to stay up all night). If not, or even (and maybe moreso) if so, then I want to let you know about the book that will change your life, and have you drinking and reading poems for days. The trick is (and this is how you can be a trendsetter, instead of a trend follower) that the book isn’t even out yet, but is pre-orderable, so you can be the first person you know to get it. It’s called In Their Cups: An Anthology of Poems About Drinking Places, Drinks, and Drinkers. I’d tell you about it in detail, but A: I edited it, so am bias’d, and B: I want to save some of my gushing for when it comes out proper, and C: the wonderful poet Richard Jackson already said this about it:
“Souls of poets dead and gone,” goes the line from Keats, but AJ Rathbun’s wonderful In Their Cups brings them back, at least for a few more drinks, and we too are invited in. And what company we enjoy: we can imagine classic poets as diverse as Catullus and Du Fu speaking to polar opposite modernists like Cesare Pavese and Appollinaire, perhaps interrupted here and there by diverse contemporary voices such as Mark Halliday and William Olsen. Rathbun has created a unique imaginary world here, adding a couple of his own fine poems to the conversation, where we can hear, with Richard Hugo, the “dusty jukebox crackling” on every page. This is a book you’ll want to raise a glass to.
Now, don’t be scared if you don’t cozy up with poets on an every day basis—you’re going to love it. I promise. Read it with drink in hand, and you’ll probably never put it down, until you fall down. Which is saying something.
PS: Want to see an actual poem that’s in the book to get you going? Check out here, and here.
May 15, 2010
Ohh, that title just makes me shudder: Death at the Bar. Perhaps the worst thing possible (well, okay, that’s a bit much—there are, in life, much worse things, but this is just a drinks blog, so give me some leeway), especially if it was a jolly evening. Which, in this book, by Ngaio Marsh (Ngaio is pronounced /ˈnaɪoʊ/ if you were wondering, and is a lady), isn’t 100% true, as the evening at the bar (a little English town bar called the Plume of Feathers. Which is fantastic, especially as it’s not a disco), is a tad contentious, with old fiesty relationships, and reds (in the commie way), and an arrogant lawyer, and more.
But it’s still a pretty good night (as the below quote points out, though it also has a bit of foreshadowing), until they decide to play darts. Because one of the characters is killed . . . by a dart. Or is he? You’ll have to read the darn book to find out, because I’m no spoiler.
Watchman had already taken three glasses of Treble Extra and, although sober, was willing to be less so. Parish, suddenly flamboyant, offered to bet Able a guinea that the brandy was not Courvoisier ’87, and on Abel shaking his head, said that if it was Courvoisier ’87, damn it, they’d kill a bottle of it there and then.
—Death at the Bar, Ngaio Marsh
April 6, 2010
It’s still early for many on the West Coast (and, depending on when you read this, whichever coast you’re on, wherever you are, it may be early for you, too), especially those who are drinkers and/or criminals. I know a lot of the former, but really none (that I know about, unless you mean those that are criminally talented or something) of the latter, except those I meet in books like The Three-Way Split, by Gil Brewer, which is about a guy trying to live a simple life with some amazingly hot waitress he’s met and some treasure buried at sea he knows about, but due to his deadbeat-and-illegality-loving dad, he ends up roughed up by thugs, who also try to get the treasure. The story echoes your own life I’m sure. How does it turn around and reconnect with morning, and it being early on the West Coast? It’s the quote, below, which is about coffee and rum—a favorite breakfast for many.
He banged two pint mugs on the table, poured in steaming coffee until they were two-thirds full. Then he brought down one of those bottles of rum, black as tar, popped the cork, and filled the mugs to the brim.
He filled the plates and we ate. The rum was like a hot rasp running across the tongue.
— The Three-Way Split, Gil Brewer
