Mouth-watering, ruby-red poetry!

Each day, I get a letter from the estimable and friendly Garrison Keillor, the delightful host of National Public Radio's "Prairie Home Companion." You know, the fictional town in Minnesota where "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

Mr. Keillor writes a blog called The Writer's Almanac, with poetry and short bios on people of letters. It's very accessible and down to earth -- no fancy/schmancy high falutin' literary snobbery at all -- just the sheer enjoyment of the glory of words (and, truly, would we expect anything less from the man who plays Guy Noir?).

So, while I'm sure that MY letter is also received by a number of others, it's amazing how often Garrison seems to hit on something that strikes close to how I've been feeling, so I like to think he's writing to me. And, since I've been thinking of cranberries all week, this poem seems especially appropriate today. Here on Cape Cod, I pass a dozen or so bogs each day just on my way to work.  I think most of them have been harvested by now -- I'll try to include a pic of the beautiful wet bog harvests sometime soon -- but, in lieu of that, here is the most gloriously beautiful recipe you'll ever see or hear. (If you don't go to The Writer's Almanac to hear it, make sure you read it out loud...)

Cranberry-Orange Relish

by John Engels

A pound of ripe cranberries, for two days

macerate in a dark rum, then do not

treat them gently, but bruise,

mash, pulp, squash

with a wooden pestle

to an abundance of juices, in fact

until the juices seem on the verge

of overswelling the bowl, then drop in

two fistsful, maybe three, of fine-

chopped orange with rind, two golden

blobs of it, and crush

it in, and then add sugar, no thin

sprinkling, but a cupful dumped

and awakened with a wooden spoon

to a thick suffusion, drench of sourness, bite of color,

then for two days let conjoin

the lonely taste of cranberry,

the joyous orange, the rum, in some

warm corner of the kitchen, until

the bowl faintly becomes

audible, a scarce wash of sound, a tiny

bubbling, and then

in a glass bowl set it out

and let it be eaten last, to offset

gravied breast and thigh

of the heavy fowl, liverish

stuffing, the effete

potato, lethargy of pumpkins

gone leaden in their crusts, let it be eaten

so that our hearts may be together overrun

with comparable sweetnesses,

tart gratitudes, until finally,

dawdling and groaning, we bear them

to the various hungerings

of our beds, lightened

of their desolations.

"Cranberry-Orange Relish" by John Engels, from Sinking Creek. © The Lyons Press, 1998. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

You can see other selections from The Writer's Almanac, and hear the poem read here.