Speccie:Cheese
 

Spherians were particularly strong this week in the Take Two Competitions. Catherine TTufariello deservedly took the fiver with Bazza and Marion Shore in hot pursuit.

The new competition is an old competition somewhere else. I know because I entered it. Was it an Oldie?


No. 2672: Cheesy Feat
Thanks to Robert Booth for suggesting this one: 'The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.' You are invited to disprove G.K.Chesterton's assertion (16 lines max.). Please email entries, if possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 3 November.

Wasn't the Chesterton quote the epigraph of William Cole's "What a Friend We Have in Cheeses!"? (Could that have been written for the Oldie comp?)

Poets are too cheesed off
to write about cheese;
poets are too often
blue like Roquefort
or Stilton.

A holy man
could write
about Swiss
cheese though

-- that would be
Gouda!

:D

Need inspiration?

http://cheesepoet.wordpress.com/cheese-poetry/

Ondes Martenot

The Martians came to me in bed.
"The earth is decomposed," they said,
"Come to the moon, it's made of cheese."
I went with them. We sailed the seas
Of Nectar and Serenity
Where I met God and God met me.
We walked through Stilton hand in hand;
"I think," I said, "I understand."
My head was like an open spout,
My cerebellum dribbled out
And God replaced my brain with Brie.
"I'm free at last," I cried. "I'm free."

Orwn, this is memorably weird and wonderful, particularly the last four lines. I hope it does well.

Meanwhile, there is a speed-camera somewhere in Switzerland painted to resemble a giant slice of Emmenthal . . .

Orwn, I like it! I promise I hadn't read yours before I wrote this one, which also mentions God and Brie:


CHEESE

Although I never cared for life
and found each day depressing,
and always thought the grave would be
a mercy and a blessing
wherein I'd say good riddance to
the world, and it to me,
to my surprise, I'm dead and yet
still hankering for Brie.

Oh God, if in your mercy you
could give me one last smear of it,
I'd look upon oblivion
without the slightest fear of it.
In short, before you wipe away
the person I call Me,
can't you see your way to give
me one more taste of Brie?

Say Cheese

"Say 'cheese,'" he cries before he snaps
my picture, as if I'll
be forced thereby to raise my cheeks
into a cheerful smile.

And yet, though I say cheese as told,
somehow my cheeks stay down,
and sure enough my portrait shows
a stubborn, solemn frown.

Cheese

I think that I shall never seize
A glass of red without some cheese,

A cheese to please the swilling throat
Like chèvre from a mountain goat.

When I dine out I always get a
Salad tossed with Grecian fetta

Round since man first tilled the soil,
The perfect pal for olive oil.

And if you want your love to stay,
Cut the curd, release the whey,

For wine and verse beneath the trees
Won’t pin her down without some cheese.

What a fun challenge! These all had me smiling. Cally, I love your Kilmer pastiche.

A Cheesy Song

They can roar out a toast to a sizzling roast.
They can whisper a trope to a stew.
They can chant an address to a haggis, no less,
(Though it’s best to be Scotch when they do).
They can eulogize booze any way that they choose.
In a verse that’s as long as you please
And there’s many a fine disquisition on wine,
Yet the poets are silent on cheese.

Where oh where is the Milton who’ll celebrate Stilton,
The Rimbaud who’ll rhapsodize Brie?
Where the curd-kissing Homer who’ll praise the aroma
Of Cheddar on toast for your tea?
There are poets so clever they go on for ever
And publish their epics with ease.
Then they toss off a scrawl about nothing at all.
Can they really stay silent on cheese?

That's a winner, John!

(I thought strophe was two syllables?)

Head Cheese

When the rest of the body is consumed
there still remains the makings of a cheese.
The recipe is simple. Boil your head.
Stir it about till all the meat drops off,
reduce the heat and let it simmer slowly
during long wakeful nights. Stir in self-doubt.
Season to taste and thicken with discretion.
Impurities will rise, but do not skim -
these are what give the finished dish its flavour.
Cool it. Leave it alone and let it gel.
Wrapped up in paper, it will keep forever.
Time-honoured standby. Never be without it.
At any time you may be called upon
to scoop and serve a spoonful on a cracker
and, piled on buttered toast, it’s just the thing
for eager little boys with hollow legs.

Ripe and rollicking, John. My COD gives 'strophe' two syllables (rhymes with 'trophy'), although I always thought it was one, so how about 'They can write subtle strophes to stew'?

And shouldn't 'Scotch' be 'Scots'?

set 'em up, joe
 

Perhaps 'trope' for 'strophe'? But it's a damn good piece, John, & so, in a quite different way, fluent blank verse, is Ann's. Ouch, the bar is set quite high. I did once, back in the day, win with a cheese poem (I think for the Speccie), an ode in praise of Roquefort, but this time, I dunno, as so often my muse & my mojo are AWOL. Back to the Carlos III, I guess.

Dieu et mon droit, otherwise, my God you're right, all three of you. Thanks for the tip, Bazza. I have made the change. Scotch was good enough for Doctor Johnson but it's true the North Britishers don't like it. I like annoying them, perhaps because I am myself demi-Scotch. But which half?

Jerome, your emendation is good too. I shall have to consider. I knew (why of course I did - three years at school!) that the word was disyllabic in Greek, but I thought the Elizabethans might have Englished it. But I thought wrong.

Perhaps Lucy has Scotch ancestors. I might change it.

Ann's is a real poem. Mine is a cheerful verse. But perhaps verse wins here.

John, shouldn't that be 'cheeseful'? (Sorry.)

We have had this challenge before - The Oldie perhaps? - I can't remember, other than that I didn't win.

Speaking of winning...I think you may well have nailed it, John.

Thank you, Roger and Jerome. I'm afraid, though, that John has topped us all.

A first line floated into my head and I thought I had hit on a brilliant cheese-wheeze. 'Loveliest of cheese, the Cheddar now . .. ' in the AEH vein. But then it dawned on me that somebody had already done this, possibly in the 1930s, and I was just remembering a quotation of the line. Is there anyone among the Sphere's eruditensia who knows the full parody or burlesque?

Perhaps you are thinking of James McIntyre, the William McGonagall of cheese? He must be the inspiration behind this week's comp.

Now THAT one's pungent, Ann! That's my fave so far - a real cracker!

grand fromage
 

Some men dream big: fantastic wealth, a life on sunny shores
Of sumptuous, pampered indolence and ease,
But my dream-objects are minute: the Penicillium spores
That grow the tasty veins in Roquefort cheese.
The hard-wired artistry they show, the energy and zeal,
Prodigious in their low-lit limestone caves,
Inscribing emerald traces in each immature white wheel,
A multitude of tiny, willing slaves,
Amenable and mellow as the lovely Lacaune ewes
Whose salted milk they magically enhance,
A beneficial fungus with a mission to infuse,
The pride of the Larzac – indeed, of France.
I'm cheesy as Bill Clinton. Cheese concludes my every meal.
I play the fromage field and wouldn't jib
At any blue bar Danish, but my fantasy ideal
Is Côtes du Tarn and Roquefort, ad lib.

Rice
is nice
but Buddha
ate Gouda.

Blue
will do
but feta
is better.

Comté
one day,
but chevre
nevre.

I diss
Swiss
but cheer
paneer.

I was wondering why you didn't put feta where you have cheddar, since the rhyme would be - better. Then I see you've rhymed feta with later - later. Do you? Does it?

John, yours is a winner for sure!

I don't know if pastiche is what Lucy has in mind for this one, but I couldn't resist.

Song of the Cheese

I sing of processed American cheese, the glory of these States,
Factory sliced and shredded by white-apron’d workers clean and strong,
But I do not decline to feast also on the cheeses of Europe.
See me at the reception, hovering over the hors d’oeuvres,
Consuming a great wheel of Cheddar golden and glowing as the sun,
Making short work of the snowy-rinded Brie,
Gobbling up every crumb of the Morbier and its layer of smoky ash,
Devouring the blue mold of Roquefort, and Gouda with its crimson wax.
In vain does soft Camembert run in the heat to escape me,
In vain does a wedge of Stinking Bishop brandish its bristling name,
In vain does ripe Limberger assault my nose with its stench of sweaty feet,
In vain does the remotest iota of fermented milk in the vast wheel’d Universe
Conceal itself on a darkened moon, or the bottom shelf of a locked-up larder,
Or in a protective crust of puff pastry.
I find I incorporate all, all are part of me,
Out of them all I press the cheese of my Self.

Catherine, "the cheese of myself" is a winner. I take it this is a small portion of your "Cheese of Grass" sequence?

Thanks, Ann, for your take on pronouncing "feta." I often hear it said "fate-uh" but maybe that's not widespread, especially in the UK where it counts. Back to the drawing board.

Indeed, it’s only a brief excerpt (scribbled on the back of a cheese wrapper) from a tragically lost Whitmanian epic of that name. How did you know?

Jerome, you asked upstream about the first line of a Housman parody you thought you’d seen before. I wonder if you were thinking of this sentence from The Brand-X Anthology of Poetry: “Milton and Wordsworth set the standard for gerontions of Cheese (and later, Snack) Poets, including John Hausman, author of 'Loveliest of Cheese, the Cheshire Now'…” So far as I can tell, the poem exists only in its winning first line, so it seems to me the field is clear for you to finish it.

Inspired (barely) by the Elvis poem on the other board, this is all I'm coming up with . . .

Gruyere and Teleme, Baby Bel,
Cambazola, Mutschli, Emental,
Ricotta, Gioda, Bruder, Gorgonzola,
Stilton, Brie, Cheddar, Laguiole,
Ircano, Jarlsberg, Mascarpone,
Maconnais, Chevre, Provolone,
Camembert, Guernsey Girl, let’s have party,
Ircano, Cheshire, Yarg, Havarti.
It may be cheesy but its true,
I’m thanking Gouda I fondue.

Frank

You were so kind
to cut the cheese,
but when we ate each slice

and you continued
cutting it,
it wasn't half as nice.

Here's one I already had, a children's triolet:

The Moon Is Made of Cheese

The moon is made of cheese.
I'm pretty sure that's true.
My teacher disagrees.
"The moon's not made of cheese,"
she laughs, but I think she's
been misinformed. Don't you?
The moon is made of cheese.
I'm pretty sure that's true.

I'm awed - particularly by Catherine's Krafty and Whitmanesque fondue. Here's some additional inspiration.

Yes, the Whitman cheese poem gets better and better each time I reread it. If Lucy has any ear for Whitman, I think Catherine will win the fiver twice in a row, which may be an unprecedented debut performance.

PS--
I corrected my poem above in light of Ann's point about how to pronounce "feta" - thanks, Ann.

The Unkindest Cut

The wedding was lovely,
though we felt ill at ease:
When the bride cut the cake,
the groom cut the cheese.


sorry!

Well done, Marion. But why not let the bride cut the cheese? Call me sexist, but farting brides may be even funnier than farting grooms.

I don't know what this one means:

"Cheese it, the cops!"
the Big Cheese wheezed,
to which I responded,
"Consider it cheesed."
.

If cheese
grew on trees
I'd climb the next vine

with toothpicks
and crackers
and bottles of wine

then find me
a branch
loaded down with Havarti

where I
could host squirrels
at a wine and cheese party.

Bob, maybe I'm sexist, but the farting groom seems funnier to me. I dunno. It's pretty sophomoric, either way.

This one's a little more spiritual.


My church is a cave of ripening cheese;
my patron saint, St. André;
I kneel before Stiltons and triple cream Bries,
give thanks for Gruyere and Morbier.

May the plastic-wrapped slices and cheese sprays in cans
be consigned to the darkest abyss!
Let us praise Gorgonzola, Romano, Boursin,
and that holy of holiest: Swiss.

oooh. sorry again...:o

Pinot noir
and creamy glee,
cabernet
with hard and strong,
fruity white
and stinky blue;
corks and curds
of heaven.

Some like moldy cheese,
others do not.
One man's feast
is another man's rot.

*************

Cheese without fat
I cannot enjoy;
but far worse than that
is cheese made with soy.

God Save the Cheese

My tastebuds, thanks to thee,
sweet land of Swiss or Brie,
of cheese I sing;
buds where saliva pools
'round cheesy molecules,
loved by savants and fools,
my heart takes wing.

Let music swell the breeze
in tribute to the cheese,
and I shall hum.
I love cheese, sheep or cow,
I'd love some cheese right now,
I will not shirk or bow
till I have some.

I had a lovely Saturday,
I found these poems and read 'em
with crackers and some chardonnay,
an Anjou pear and edam.