Ba, baa, baaa, ba bum! That’s right cocktail lovers, the moment you’ve dreamed about since the finale of the last season of the Cocktail to Cocktail Hour dripped to a close is here–the new C2C season is now beginning (sorry for the wait. Our cameraman had some problems in a Central American lock up. But all’s well now). And what a beginning it is, friends, one that will be sung about in bars from here to Poughkeepsie. We have a very special lit’rary guest for this first episode, none other than poet and drink-maker and shot-putter extraordinaire, Ed Skoog, making his soon-to-be-renowned cocktail (a cocktail featured in Ginger Bliss and the Violet Fizz) the Ellipse. I’d say more, but I don’t want to spoil the fun, and the episode is a tad lengthy, so, with no further palaver, let the new season begin.
Hello and happy Monday! It’s not only now less than two weeks before the below-mentioned Ginger Bliss and the Violet Fizz Rob Roy release event, but today is also the birthday of Mr. Ed Skoog, a poet and cocktail aficionado of the first ranking, whose poems highlight the compilation of drinking verse called In Their Cups, and whose past spirited creations have been in Dark Spirits, that compendium of darkly-natured drinks. Those two occurrences (Mr. Skoog’s birthday and upcoming GBVF party) make this the absolutely perfect day to drink an Ellipse. Why? Cause it’s a drink created by Skoog that’s featured in Ginger Bliss and the Violet Fizz. A delicious and creative drink, I may say, also, though you should expect that from Mr. Skoog. And I expect you to wish him happy fortieth today, if you happen to see him. And buy him a drink why dontcha?
1 teaspoon fresh marjoram leaves
Ice cubes
2 ounces Strega
Chilled Prosecco
Fresh marjoram sprig, for garnish
1. Add the marjoram to a cocktail shaker. Using a muddler or wooden spoon, muddle gently.
2. Fill the cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add the Strega. Shake well.
3. Strain (preferably with a fine-mesh strainer) into a flute glass. Top with Prosecco, almost to the rim, and garnish with the marjoram.
Hello hello, and sorry for the extended holiday break from blog posts. But at least I left you with the first two episodes of the new season of the Cocktail to Cocktail Hour (still four more new episodes left—can you believe it!). And, I’m back to help you start your New Year right, with a link to a blog post on the PBS blog The Daily Need, a post which features videos from four (that’s right, four) of the poets who have poems in In Their Cups: An Anthology of Poems about Drinking Places, Drinks, and Drinkers. Each poet is reading one of the poems they have in the book while sipping on a favorite drink. I can’t think of any way to kick start a cocktail-a-rific and poetic year than by watching the videos (repeatedly, to ensure the year is really all that and then some). The post includes videos featuring amazing writers (and charming drinking companions) Ed Skoog, Amy Fleury, Emily Bedard, and also a video with me (wearing a boss coat, I have to admit). So what are you waiting for? Get your year started right by heading to the Daily Need now.
For the last poem in In Their Cups week 2010 (celebrating the release and release party this Sunday for In Their Cups and the drinking poems contained therein, as if you didn’t know), I wanted to highlight one of the two poems in book by Ed Skoog (I should mention though, that he also has translations in the book from three languages–you’ll have to look to find out which languages). Without Ed, In Their Cups would have been called “Cups with Holes” and been awfully leaky, cause he not only let me put poems and translations of his own in the book, but helped me track down more poems that made the cut and are in the book, gave advice on ordering of poems and sections, drank a lot with me during the putting together of the book, and was generally helpful in every way you can think of plus a few more you’d forgotten.
If you don’t know already, Ed is one of the best poets anywhere alive today–buy his book Mister Skylight and you will be changed–but is also a drink maker of some renown, a drink consumer of much renown, and a sweet banjo player to boot who can sing the high lonesome like few others (even after a few–let’s say 5-to-10–shots). If you ever are going into a bar for the long haul (which I’m guessing you will be, probably soon), bring him along. Or at least bring this poem of his about New Orleans’ Saturn Bar, a truly divine dive, along with you as an Ed sub.
The Last Saturn Bar Poem
Around the art barn, Mike Frolich’s bar-tab
bartered paintings hang the hell that rose with him
from the Gulf of Mexico floor too fast, torturing
blood with air: maniac fish, demon in a diving bell,
and then from cadmium sunset through marsh comes
the boat bearing forward in grand roving the name
O’Neal, our bartender. Theirs are the dreams we enter,
entering the Saturn Bar’s owly heat re-tooled for unlovely
loss, the rattled corner leaning away from Chartreuse, neat,
and when I’m able to dream jukebox damaged warbling,
a Saturn-like-thing opens within me, but this is the last
Saturn Bar poem–I’ll try, I’ll try–to stop singing
shadows of St. Claude and Clouet on security camera
pavement grays we keep talking about with increasing
reluctance, ready to move on to fresh bewilderments,
spiraling neon, neon that lights up my nameless shot.
Calling all drinkers, drink-makers, poets, poetry-readers, and anyone who is friends with anyone who fits in the above categories–which means, calling everyone. I was lucky enough to spend a chunk of the last year or so editing up a collection of poems about drinking places, drinks, and drinkers, and you’re lucky because said collection is coming out this month, and we’re having a big reading/party to celebrate. It’s going to be September 26th, at 3 pm, at Open Books here in Seattle (Open Books is at 2414 N. 45th St. Seattle, and the full reading listing is here).
Wait, though, jump back–I haven’t even told you the name yet. The anthology is called In Their Cups, and it features poets from hither and yon, poets who wrote in ancient times all the way up to poets who wrote a line yesterday. The whole idea behind the book (in a way) was to populate one giant bar with poets from throughout history, give them all some cocktails, and let them start spouting poems that would encompass the experiences of all drinkers. Did it work? You can find out by coming to the reading (or picking up the book, if you can’t make it). The reading will feature four of Seattle’s finest poets (and me) reading the poem they have in the book, plus a couple others from poets who couldn’t make it because they don’t live nearby, or don’t live at all anymore. The line-up includes:
Effervescent Emily Bedard
Action-packed Allen Braden
Jumpin’ jolly James Gurley
Awfully excited to be in such company A.J. Rathbun
One giant mystery guest
If you still aren’t sold, the full-on listing of poets who have poems on the pages of InTheir Cups is: A.J. Rathbun, Henry Aldrich, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Guillaume Apollinaire, Emily Bedard, Bridget Bell, Allen Braden, Henry Carey, Richard Carr, Catullus, John Clare, Jaime Curl, Emily Dickinson, Philip Dow, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Stephen Dunn, Amy Fleury, Philip Freneau, Du Fu, Thomas Godfrey, Jeff Greer, James Gurley, Mark Halliday, Robert Herrick, Charles Fenno Hoffman, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Elizabeth Hughey, Richard Hugo, Christopher Janke, Jonathan Jonson, John Keats, J. Robert Lennon, John Lyly, William Maginn, Tod Marshall, Robert Hinkley Messinger, Dan Morris, Joseph O’Leary, William Olsen, Cesare Pavese, Li Po, Francesco Redi, Arthur Rimbaud, Ed Skoog, Gerald Stern, George Walter Thornbury, Chase Twichell, and Royall Tyler.
See you on the 26th friends and neighbors and local poetic drunkards.
It is the middle of the holiday cocktail party season. There are, let’s see, daytime work holiday parties, and nighttime work holiday parties, afternoon drinking parties with friends, and evening drinking parties with friends, holiday booze-teas with families, and holiday booze-luncheons with families, and holiday booze evenings with families, and then a host of parties thrown by those that might be friends, but not good friends, but parties you feel you should go to anyway, in the spirit of the season. With all this holiday partying, it’s possible (if not probable) that one or two of the parties may be more chore than cheer. With that, I’d like to present the following poem by Catullus, ancient partier. The poem is about these later parties a bit, and may well be worth reciting loudly when you’re at any holiday party. The translation (because, well, I can’t read ancient Latin) is by modern partier and poet Ed Skoog (did you get Mister Skylight yet? Cause if not, I’m sending a zombie Catullus to haunt you) and is, well, delicious.
Poem 27
Are you tending the bar, kid? Pour me the strong stuff,
the Falernian wine, and one for yourself. We’re going to need it,
the way this party is going. Our host, Postumia, is drunker than
these grapes. No water, please. It kills what wine is.
Save water for the fool who prefers his own sorrow.
This wine is more than wine. It’s the blood of the god
whose mother was destroyed by his father’s splendor,
the god of madness and ecstasy, who shares it with us.
PS: Enjoy this drunken poetry and lit’rature stuff? Then you must, I say must, visit the blog Drunk Literature. It’s a literary boozehound’s dream blog.
I (along with wife Nat) got the nicest batch of ginger snaps recently from pal Jill M (her husband, pal Ed, has a book just out called Mister Skylight that you should buy, by the way). The snaps were a bit more cookie-y than many ginger snaps (so, not crisp like some traditional ginger biscuits, and nowhere near ginger nuts, or, for that matter ginger balls. And yes, I just said ginger balls. But now my traffic skyrockets), but with goodly ginger flavor and a little bit of chewiness. I liked them lots, and ate lots of them. But then I started thinking: there is a baker’s dozen of them, maybe I should make a drink using them as a garnish? This is the way my mind works. And, I was also thinking (I have up to three trains of thought at once: right now, they consist of writing this post, thinking about a post on the comics blog Progressive Ruin that combines Adam West Batman with Dark Night Batman, and musing about how the leaning tower of Pisa doesn’t fall over) that with the holiday season you might want to know about a drink that uses ginger snaps as a garnish. Cause the snaps tend to show up this time of year.
So, I wanted a ginger-y drink, but one also with some other funtastic flavors. Which led to me playing around with this VeeV Acai (it’s a super fruit!) Spirit I’d had sent to me recently and Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur. The Veev is pretty sprightly with some tropical hints, the DdeC is very gingery and touch sweet, and at first the playing around wasn’t coming out quite right–until I added ol’ reliable, sweet vermouth. Its bit of holy herbal-ness completely rounded out the edges of the other two, and all-of-sudden I was in ginger-island-holiday-paradise. I suggest you stock up on all of the ingredients so you can get to this paradise, too (and because you may just need a drink before the month’s out. The holidays aren’t all sunshine).
Ice cubes
1-1/2 ounces VeeV Acai spirit
1 ounce Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur
1/2 ounce sweet vermouth
Ginger snap or cookie, for garnish
1. Fill a cocktail shaker halfway full with ice cubes. Add everything except the cookie. Shake well.
2. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with that cookie (I had to notch it just a bit for proper rim balancing. But after that, I did a lot of dunking with it).
Following up on our Ed Skoog-drinks-and-almost-pokes-his-eye-out (thanks for the worry, too, PhiSmi–it’s nice to know folks like you are looking out for the eyes of poets like Ed) post below, I decided to turn this into Ed Skoog week (a week being two posts here at the ol’ Spiked Punch). With that, here’s the first stanza in a poem Ed had in LitRag magazine, issue 5, in Winter 1999, almost 10 years ago. Jeezus. He doesn’t necessarily like the poem anymore (cause poets are like that), but hey, this is my blog, and I’ll do what I want. So there. And I do think this stanza is such a perfect dip into the personality/personalities of that moment when you’ve left the bar after being there a bit to walk out into the night. And I like bars, and poems, and you, which made me think you might like reading it, too. We’ll see (and, this gives me a chance to give a fat shout out from fat me to LitRag magazine, which I used to put out for the screaming masses with D-Rock back in the day, as the kids say).
Cocktail to Cocktail Hour V2, They Shall Inherit the EarthDecember 17, 2011
Booze, singing, jollity--Episode 2 of the Cocktail to Cocktail Hour features cocktail They Shall Inherit the Earth, made with Benedictine, Cointreau, brandy and lemon juice, a drink featured in Ginger Bliss and the Violet Fizz.
Season two of the Cocktail to Cocktail Hour kicks off with the Ellipse Cocktail created and made by poet Ed Skoog. It's a poetic mix of Strega and bubbly and more, with lots of party talk mixed within the moments. C'mon on by.
Join the GBVF Army today! Making parties tastier one sip at a time. And learn about Ginger Bliss and the Violet Fizz: A Cocktail Lover's Guide to Mixing Drinks Using New and Classic Liqueurs.
Learn to make the rum-based Bedroom Eyes with AJ Rathbun in the finale episode of the new season of the show about cocktails and drinking and good times, the Good Spirits Cocktail to Cocktail Hour. As a bonus, AJ sings and dances and drinks.
