Another came after the reading. Vijay Seshadri talked to me about the challenges of reading Larkin, of getting your mouth around his words, hearing them — in your voice, in his.  He compared reading Philip Larkin aloud and reading  Elizabeth Bishop aloud.

“Try it,” he said. “Read ‘At the Fishhouses’, and read ‘Church Going.’ Try it.” I do. Four lines into each, the difference in mechanics of speech alone is striking. Contrasts expand and strengthen with each read.

Nourishment, space constraints, and lines from John Berryman, occupy my essay, “A Concern with Space Leads Elsewhere” at the new Inquisitive Eater from New School.

With your next meal — alone or with another — and surely with food, read poems. A suggested list, to start:

Bishop’s “At the Fishhouses”

Larkin’s “Church Going“. (listen on YouTube or read in the new The Complete Poems. edited by Archie Burnett (FSG, 2012)

Poochigian’s poems in 2011 in The Dark Horse or in his Cosmic Purr

Seshadri’s “The Descent of Man.”

Berryman’s Dream Song 29

What do you see, taste, hear?  Let me know…