peachy

this crate of delectable, a fireworks of flavor that bursts on our tongues, plopped onto the front stoop not long ago (courtesy of a long-distance angel/saint/and holy mensch), and after parceling into brown paper sacks for a few of our favorite neighbors, the whole block has unanimously declared them the most delicious peaches that ever there were. in honor of their magical appearance out of the summer fog, a few morsels from the “peach” file.

first up, this perfection of a poem from a poet i only recently discovered, a chicago poet in fact, a longtime warehouse worker who penned beauties once he clocked off the job, and who before that made jewelry from soda bottle tops and wound up in the pages of vogue. his name is li-young lee, born in indonesia to chinese parents, and settled in chicago in 1964. he’s now described as a world-renowned poet, one who’s won the lannan literary award, a paterson poetry prize, and an american book award, among many. after reading “from blossoms,” i ran to the library and scarfed up all his books from the shelf. and then i read a few interviews. and now i sit and inhale his poetries as if to fill my lungs with the numinous.

his is an abiding belief that all the cosmos is imbued with a spark of the sacred, an idea i’ve spent a long time believing.

From Blossoms

BY LI-YOUNG LEE

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Li-Young Lee, “From Blossoms” from Rose. Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee.

in a conversation at a literary fest a few years ago, one i found in the los angeles review of books, lee says this, and you’ll see why i’m swooning:

If the person is a vessel then what would poetry be?

The mind of God. I think poetry is the mind of God. All the great poems that I love seem to me to all have that little ingredient. You feel like you’re in the presence of the mind of God. You can’t even account for the level of wisdom in certain poems. Take Rilke, I mean, you can’t just live and come to the conclusions he came to. I think his mission was to learn to get out of the way so that something bigger could speak through him.

Emily Dickinson, my God, she’s full of the mind of God. You can just feel God shining through those poems, darkly. So it was her, but it wasn’t. It’s unaccountable. In other words, if you wanted to be Emily Dickinson you couldn’t just have been born on the East coast, done the things she did. That wouldn’t guarantee that you could write anything. There’s something unaccountable that happened to her. And it’s that unaccountable thing that I love.

elsewhere lee has said that he considers every poem to be “a descendent of God.” and when asked about flawed poems by poets and writers, he explained: “There are great poems that have flaws. There are failures of perception, failures of understanding, but those flaws become a part of the poem’s integrity, so I still feel that those poems are descendants of God. But if a poem isn’t even good enough to be a poem, I don’t think it’s descended from God: [If] there is no “I” [as in Martin Buber’s I and Thou], there is no God. The ‘Me’ talking about ‘Me’—that’s not enough.”

and in a lineup of descendants of God, surely here’s a preacher: wendell berry, kentucky farmer, field plower, poet. it doesn’t take long for some to pack an almighty wallop; here’s wendell in a single stanza:

A Spiritual Journey

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

~ Wendell Berry ~
(Collected Poems)

and here’s one that especially melted me, because it came to me from the budding philosopher in this house. a recent college grad who has an eye for these things, and whose curiosities in this department are as delicious to me as the juiciest peach that ever there was….

Confucius, the renowned Chinese philosopher, once said, “A seed grows with no sound, but a tree falls with a tremendous noise. Destruction has noise, but creation is quiet. This is the power of silence. Grow silently.”

and finally, in honor of said budding philosopher and the juiciest peaches that ever there were, here is a long-ago-concocted rendition of peach-blueberry bread pudding, though truly the only way to eat these (or any plucked-straight-from-the-tree) peaches is bent over the sink, ready to swipe the dribble as it runs down your chin and wherever else it tries to escape.

teddy’s bread pudding, the peachy summer edition*

  • 3 cups milk (or cream)
  • 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, more for greasing pan
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup sugar, plus 1 tablespoon
  • Pinch salt
  • ½ loaf sweet egg bread like challah or brioche, torn into 2-inch cubes (about 5 to 6 cups)
  • 3 eggs, beaten
  • 3 peaches, sliced
  • 3 to 4 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 1 cup blueberries
  1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Over low heat in a small saucepan, warm milk, butter, 1/2-cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and salt. Continue cooking just until butter melts. Meanwhile, butter a 4-to-6-cup baking dish and tear the bread into bite-sized bits. Place the bread in baking dish.
  2. Slice peaches into separate medium-sized mixing bowl; stir in brown sugar. Set aside (wherein magic ensues, and syrup emerges). Rinse blueberries, and allow to drain.
  3. Once peaches are bathing in their brown-sugary juices (anywhere from five to 10 to even 15 minutes should do it), dump fruits atop bread chunks. Stir gently.
  4. Pour hot milk over bread, peaches, and blueberries. Let it sit for a few minutes, poking down the occasional chunk of bread that rises to the top. Beat the eggs briefly, and stir them into bread and fruit mixture. Mix together remaining cinnamon and sugar, and sprinkle over the top. Set the baking dish in a larger baking pan, and pour hot water into the pan, to within about an inch of the top of the baking dish, effectively making a bath for your bake.
  5. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until custard is set but still a little wobbly and edges of bread have browned. Serve warm or at room temperature.

inhale the endless comfort vapors….

*thank you, mark bittman, for your endless guidance and your recipe on much-splattered page 662.

what was peachy ’bout your week?