Marianne Murphy Zarzana
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Christine Stewart-Nunez to Read at SMSU, Thurs., March 3, 7 p.m., CH 201

3/2/2011

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Christine Stewart-Nunez will be reading from her new book of poetry, Keeping Them Alive, at Southwest Minnesota State University, tomorrow, Thursday, March 3 at 7 p.m., in CH 201. I love the "voluptous rapture," as poet Lee Ann Roripaugh describes it, that Christine captures in this praise poem about pregnancy.


In Praise of a Pregnant Body

Some women count calories, step on the altar
of weight each week, mourn the loss of waist--
jeans too tight to button, I prefer to blossom.
I surrender to coconut salmon in banana leaves,
miso soup with prawns, paella, lasagna, seafood
risotto, mangu and tostones, salads of blueberries,
blood oranges, and papaya, the bloom of belly,
breasts spilling over seams, petals of areolas darkening.

I’ve abandoned the lunch-break park with its tire swing
and picnic of stale chips for the circus, lion tamers,
dogs with purple tutus, magicians pulling doves
from top hats, trapeze artists somersaulting
through the air. I want the Big Top’s pillows
of cotton candy dissolving in my mouth, mounds
of popcorn shiny with butter, globs of caramel
apples, hot dogs drenched in mustard.

Blood thickening and milk springing from nipples
remind me: be open. Enough of this suburb
with its square meals served in look-alike
houses. Give me Paris with its artists scattered
on sidewalks, painted confetti, dancers
in discotheques stretching onto streets at dawn.
With more body to envelop, I’ll browse boutiques
at the Rue du St.-Honoré, lounge sipping café-au-lait,
nibbling a croissant’s flakey layers. Order coq-au-vin
or pot-au-feu, decorate the board with baguette,
brie. Will mousse aux fraises complete me?

If I’d been born with different genes--
petite, straight-hipped, willowy-tall—would I enjoy
fat bowls of kalamata olives, sliced avocado,
desserts of mangoes in cream, pumpkin pie?
I surrender to possibility, to joy, to feasts
of seven-grain breads, lamb stews, chocolate
soufflés. I thank this baby whose growing bones
demand wheels of provolone, sticks of mozzarella,
cubes of sharp cheddar, cups of vanilla yogurt
at two a.m., whose kicks remind me to taste
roast beef, venison steak, the cream of deviled eggs.


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Favorite Love Stories

2/13/2011

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In an earlier post, I mentioned that my husband and I are reading aloud together Julia Child's book My Life in France.  Last summer we saw the movie Julie & Julia where we learned about Julia's marriage to Paul Child. Reading the book has shed more light on their fascinating and beautiful love story: 

"I was lucky to marry Paul. He was a great inspiration, his enthusiasm about wine and food helped to shape my tastes, and his encouragement saw me through discouraging moments. I would never have had my career without Paul Child."

Paul was ten years older than Julia, well traveled, cultured, and an excellent cook. They met in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) during World War II and married in 1946. Julia didn't know how to cook, so she took a bride-to-be cooking course. The first meal she cooked for Paul--brains simmered in red wine--turned out to be a disaster: "Paul laughed it off, and we scrounged up something else that night. But deep down I was annoyed with myself, and I grew more determined than ever to learn how to cook well."

And cook well Julia did. Paul's work took them to France where Julia "fell in love with French cooking and found her 'true calling'." You probably know the rest of the story. 

What are your favorite poems, short stories, books (fiction or non-fiction) that deal with love or romance? Your favorite authors? 
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Food Glorious Food Books

2/6/2011

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According to The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, "It's the birthday of journalist Michael Pollan, born on Long Island, New York (1955). He's the author of best-selling books about food: The Botany of Desire (2001), The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), In Defense of Food (2008), and Food Rules (2010). His nutrition philosophy is: 'Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.' He also said, 'Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.'" 
Although I have not read any of Pollan's books yet (they ARE on my list of books I plan to read), when I was teaching an author's course on Wendell Berry at Southwest Minnesota State University, I read his excellent introduction to Berry's book Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food. Here's an excerpt:
"Americans today are having a national conversation about food and agriculture that it would have been impossible to imagine even a few short years ago. To many Americans it must sound like a brand-new conversation, with its bracing talk about the high price of cheap food, or the links between soil and health, or the impossibility of a society eating well and being in good health unless it also farms well. But to read the essays in this sparkling anthology, many of them dating back to the 1970s and 1980s, is to realize just how little of what we are saying and hearing today Wendell Berry hasn’t already said, bracingly, before.”

Have you read Berry or Pollan? What are your favorite books they've written? How has their writing affected how you view food and agriculture in your life?

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The Beauty of Ordinary Things

12/5/2010

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Here is an excerpt from yesterday's email of  The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor:
"Today is the birthday of poet Rainer Maria Rilke born in Prague (1875). He wrote a cycle of 10 long poems that he called The Duino Elegies, about the difference between angels and people, and the meaning of death, and his idea that human beings are put on earth in order to experience the beauty of ordinary things.

"In the Ninth Elegy, Rilke wrote: "Maybe we're here only to say: house, / bridge, well, gate, jug, olive tree, window — / at most, pillar, tower ... but to say them, remember, / oh, to say them in a way that the things themselves / never dreamed of existing so intensely."

This morning I made a crockpot stew--beef, carrots, leeks, potatoes, tomatoes, cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cayenne pepper. By 5:30 our home was filled with an extraordinary aroma. The beauty of ordinary things. How often I overlook this beauty. What a moment of grace when I have the eyes to see, the ears to hear, the full awareness to experience the beauty of ordinary things.


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Snow Plumes and Squash Soup

12/3/2010

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Light, powdery snow falling all day. The tall ornamental grasses in our front garden turned into feathery white plumes, elegant dancers. 

Inside, I cooked a big pot of squash soup with lots of onion, garlic, ginger and cayenne pepper, served it with pine nuts and bacon bits, cheese and bread. I also roasted carrots and parsnips in olive oil. 

Warming, colorful, simple comfort food served on a cold, snowy-white day with our family and a friend gathered around the kitchen table. Oh, and buckeyes for dessert, that delicious combo of chocolate and peanut butter, a gift from Josh, a former creative writing student. Divine.

The eye hungers for beauty found in nature. The tongue desires flavor, spice, not mere sustenance. And what about our other appetites? "In the presence of a good poem, we remember/discover the soul has an appetite, and that appetite is for emotional veracity and the unsayable," writes Stephen Dunn in the chapter titled "The Good and the Not So Good" in his book Walking Light. What poems come to mind for you when you read that quote?
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    I love to play with words. To capture moments on the page. To explore the physical and spiritual geography of what I call "fly-over country." I write from imagination, observation and my own experience of wandering in fly-over country--the literal, physical spaces of my life on the Minnesota prairie and the inner territory of the soul. 

    I teach writing at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, Minnesota. I enjoy cooking and traveling with my husband Jim, reading, practicing yoga, playing tennis, biking, hiking and gardening.

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