Welcome to my Humble Chapeau

That, you just might know, is how Belle Carroca (played by the incomparable Lainie Kazan) greets Alan Swann (played by the inarguably heroic Peter O'Toole) in My Favorite Year, and it has always seemed to me as fine a welcome as any. I set up this thing up so long ago, I'd almost forgotten all about it. I think way back then I thought I'd come up with something incredibly interesting to say about Emily Dickinson, from whom I took the name of this thing, but I chickened out, and, anyway, so much the better to read her poems than to talk about them.

But here I am, so I should say something. First: Hi there, whoever you are. Let's start with poetry. I'll get to politics, faith, and food later.

I was very pleased with the response to an essay I recently wrote for the Poetry Foundation, called "In Search of the Auden Martini." One of the pleasures of working on the essay was that it gave me a good reason to read Auden, whom I hadn't read in ages, and to read an awful lot about Auden. If you haven't read Dorothy Farnan's Auden in Love, I highly recommend it. Farnan's prose can be a little over the top, and much of the book consists of gossip and anecdote. Maybe that's why it's such a ripping read, a perfect diversion for a rainy afternoon or sleepless night.

One of the other pleasures of working on the essay: it gave me a good reason to read an awful lot about the martini, and I wholeheartedly recommend Lowell Edmunds' bracing treatise, Martini Straight Up: The Classic American Cocktail. It's smart, funny, and fiercely polemical.

Yet one more pleasure: A reason to make, and drink, plenty of martinis. All in the name of research.

More soon. Thanks for stopping by.