Eat, Drink, and Be Merry Poems About Food and Drink

by WASHINGTON, PETER

• ISBN13: 9781400040230
• ISBN10: 140004023X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-04-08
• Publisher: Everyman's Library

Summary

Eating and drinking and the rituals that go with them are at least as important as loving in most people's lives, yet for every hundred anthologies of poems about love, hardly one is devoted to the pleasures of the table.Eat, Drink, and Be Merryabundantly fills the gap. All kinds of foods and beverages are laid out in these pages, along with picnics and banquets, intimate suppers and quiet dinners, noisy parties and public celebrationsin poems by Horace, Catullus, Hafiz, Rumi, Rilke, Moore, Nabokov, Updike, Mandelstam, Stevens, and many others. From Sylvia Plath's ecstatic vision of juice-laden berries in "Blackberrying" to D. H. Lawrence's lush celebration of "Figs," from the civilized comfort of Noel Coward's "Something on a Tray" to the salacious provocation of Swift's "Oysters," from Li Po on "Drinking Alone" to Baudelaire on "The Soul of the Wine," and from Emily Dickinson's "Forbidden Fruit" to Elizabeth Bishop's "A Miracle for Breakfast,"Eat, Drink, and Be Merryserves up a tantalizing and variegated literary feast.

Author Biography

Peter Washington is the editor of many of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, including Love Poems, and is the author of Madame Blavatsky's Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America.

Table of Contents

PLAIN FOOD
Food	15	(1)
John Updike
Undue Significance	15	(1)
Emily Dickinson
On Food	16	(2)
Hilaire Belloc
Taste	18	(1)
John Davies
From Satires II.2	19	(2)
Horace/Alexander Pope
A Glass of Water	21	(1)
May Sarton
Bread	22	(1)
R. S. Thomas
Milk, Milk, Milk	23	(2)
Cole Porter
Of Tea, Commended by Her Majesty	25	(1)
Edmund Waller
The Two Teapots	26	(1)
John Fuller
Coffee	27	(1)
Anon
From The Rape of the Lock	27	(1)
Alexander Pope
Farm Wife	28	(3)
R. S. Thomas
SQUARE MEALS
Sunday Morning Breakfast Time	31	(1)
Cole Porter
Dr Browning at Breakfast	32	(2)
Walter De La Mare
A Miracle for Breakfast	34	(2)
Elizabeth Bishop
`I never had a piece of toast'	36	(1)
Anon
Breakfast	36	(1)
William Carlos Williams
Breakfast with Gerard Manley Hopkins	37	(1)
Anthony Brode
Epigram III.27	38	(1)
Martial
Epigram X.48	39	(1)
Martial
After Lunch	40	(1)
Po Chu-I
Tea	40	(1)
Wallace Stevens
The Banquet	41	(1)
Hafiz
Angelo Orders his Dinner	42	(2)
Bayard Taylor
Le Diner	44	(2)
A. H. Clough
A Literary Dinner	46	(1)
Vladimir Nabokov
Inviting a Friend to Supper	47	(2)
Ben Jonson
Supper With Lindsay	49	(3)
Theodore Roethke
Poetry for Supper	52	(1)
R. S. Thomas
Something on a Tray	53	(2)
Noel Coward
The Hever Picnic	55	(1)
Ralph Hodgson
The Dining Room	56	(1)
Czeslaw Milosz
Restaurant Car	57	(4)
Louis MacNeice
FRUIT
The Fruit	61	(1)
Rainer Maria Rilke
The Dish of Fruit	62	(1)
William Carlos Williams
Forbidden Fruit	62	(1)
Emily Dickinson
Kelmscott Crab Apples	63	(1)
William Morris
Apples for Paul Suttman	64	(2)
Anthony Hecht
Moonlit Apples	66	(1)
John Drinkwater
Quince	67	(1)
Shafer Ben Utman Al-Mushafi
A Quince Preserved through the Winter, Given to a Lady	68	(1)
Antiphilos
The Lemon	68	(1)
Abdullah IBN Al-Mutazz
The Strawberry Plant	69	(1)
Ruth Pitter
Nevertheless	70	(2)
Marianne Moore
Persimmons	72	(1)
Issa
The Cloud-berry	72	(1)
John Veitch
Blueberries	73	(5)
Robert Frost
Blueberrying in August	78	(1)
Amy Clampitt
Brambleberries, Blackberries	79	(1)
Ruth Pitter
Blackberrying	80	(2)
Sylvia Plath
Tangerine Eater	82	(1)
Rainer Maria Rilke
A Dish of Peaches in Russia	83	(1)
Wallace Stevens
Tropical Fruit	84	(1)
James Thomson
Nine Nectarines	85	(2)
Marianne Moore
Sunday Lemons	87	(2)
Derek Walcott
A Song of Bananas	89	(2)
Rudyard Kipling
Damson Boy	91	(1)
Ruth Pitter
Autumn Fruits	92	(1)
James Thomson
From A Kumquat for John Keats	93	(4)
Tony Harrison
VEGETABLES
Last Year's Picnic	97	(1)
Philodemos
Epigram XI.31	98	(1)
Martial
Rosemary	99	(1)
Marianne Moore
Eating Bamboo-Shoots	100	(1)
Po Chu-I
Yam	101	(1)
James Merrill
Peas	102	(1)
Anon
The Broad Bean Sermon	103	(2)
Les Murray
Mushrooms	105	(2)
Sylvia Plath
Swedes	107	(1)
Edward Thomas
The Mangel-Bury	108	(2)
Ivor Gurney
Potato	110	(2)
Richard Wilbur
Recipe for a Salad	112	(1)
Sydney Smith
Salad	113	(2)
William Cowper
Brow	115	(4)
Mortimer Collins
DELICATESSEN
In Schrafft's	119	(1)
W. H. Auden
Gooseberry Fool	120	(2)
Amy Clampitt
Honey	122	(1)
Apollonides
The Honeycomb	122	(1)
Robert Herrick
High Sugar	123	(1)
Les Murray
Chocolates	124	(2)
Louis Simpson
Ice Cream	126	(1)
Osip Mandelstam
A Grace for Ice-Cream	127	(1)
Allan M. Laing
From Epistle to Mrs Tyler	128	(1)
Christopher Smart
Written on a Paper which Contained a Piece of Bride Cake given to the Author by a Lady	129	(2)
William Collins
The Bun	131	(1)
Walter De La Mare
A Piece of Cake	132	(1)
Tony Harrison
Offering	133	(1)
Philip
From The Alchemist	134	(1)
Ben Jonson
From The Battle of the Summer Islands	135	(3)
Edmund Waller
A Simple Feast	138	(1)
Krinagoras
The Poet, the Oyster, and the Sensitive Plant	139	(3)
William Cowper
Ode on a Jar of Pickles	142	(2)
Bayard Taylor
Epigram V.78	144	(5)
Martial
THE FOOD OF LOVE
I am a Peach Tree	149	(1)
Li Po
Wild Peaches	150	(2)
Elinor Wylie
Cherry	152	(1)
Gene Baro
The Orange	153	(1)
Wendy Cope
The Oranges	154	(1)
Abd Ur-Rahman Ibn Mohammed Ibn Omar
Pomegranate	154	(1)
Diodoros Zonas
Figs	155	(5)
D. H. Lawrence
Moon Milk	160	(1)
Sudraka
Since	161	(2)
W. H. Auden
Elegies 1.4	163	(3)
Ovid
Christopher Marlowe
From Don Juan	166	(1)
George Gordon
Lord Byron
An Invitation to an Invitation	167	(1)
Catullus
Sylvia	168	(1)
Samuel Croxall
Epicurean Reminiscences of a Sentimentalist	169	(3)
Thomas Hood
At Tea	172	(1)
Thomas Hardy
In Praise of Cocoa, Cupid's Nightcap	173	(1)
Stanley J. Sharpless
Oysters	174	(3)
Jonathan Swift
FEASTING AND FASTING
That Little Old Bar in the Ritz	177	(1)
Cole Porter
Meat without Mirth	178	(1)
Robert Herrick
The Party's Going with a Swing	179	(4)
Noel Coward
From The Fudge Family in Paris	183	(2)
Thomas Moore
From Sir Gawain and the Green Knight	185	(4)
Anon
Sonnet to Vauxhall	189	(1)
Thomas Hood
Henry King	190	(1)
Hilaire Belloc
On the Great Eater of Grays-Inn	191	(3)
Charles Cotton
The Glutton	194	(1)
Walter De La Mare
On Gut	195	(1)
Ben Jonson
Epigram VIII.23	195	(1)
Martial
The Gourmand	196	(5)
Harry Graham
From Piers Plowman	201	(5)
William Langland
Fasting	206	(1)
Rumi
The Grape Cure	207	(2)
James Merrill
Curl Up and Diet	209	(2)
Ogden Nash
On a Diet	211	(4)
William Matthews
LIQUOR IS QUICKER
The Five Reasons	215	(1)
Henry Aldrich
Reflection on Ice-Breaking	215	(1)
Ogden Nash
Drinking	216	(1)
Abraham Cowley
Facing Wine	217	(1)
Li Po
On One, Who Said, He Drank to Clear His Eyes	218	(1)
Charles Cotton
Consummate Drinkers	219	(2)
Benedictbeuern Ms.
Odes III.21	221	(1)
Horace
Great Bacchus	222	(1)
Matthew Prior
Drinking in the Morning	223	(1)
Abdullah Ibn Al-Mutazz
Drinking Alone	224	(1)
Li Po
Usquebaugh	225	(1)
Wendy Cope
Hogmanay	226	(1)
Norman MacCaig
John Barleycorn	227	(3)
Robert Burns
The Soul of the Wine	230	(1)
Charles Baudelaire
Winejug	231	(1)
Osip Mandelstam
The Wine of the Question	232	(1)
Hafiz
His Farewell to Sack	233	(3)
Robert Herrick
A Voice From Under The Table	236	(3)
Richard Wilbur
Acknowledgments	239	(10)
Index of Authors	249