Thanksgiving 2006
Hello and welcome! Let me take your coat and hat. Please grab a warm cider and let’s meet the other guests by the fire. Dinner will begin shortly. This is the fifth year of this poem series and our guest of honor is John Ashbery. The concept is a menu poem. Each course has a poem associated with a food item in that dish. This is a small tribute to a great poet and if I could have him over for thanksgiving dinner I would make him this. And if he ever decides to come, I’ll be sure to send you an invite so we all can enjoy a small moment of comfort together.
Best, Geoffrey Gatza
 Thanksgiving 2006: a feast to honor John Ashbery, by Geoffrey Gatza is part of an annual thanksgiving poem series. This is the fifth installment in that series which include menu poems for:
Thanksgiving 2006 John Ashbery
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Thanksgiving 2002 Charles Bernstein
Thanksgiving 2003 Forrest Gander
Thanksgiving 2004 Kent Johnson
Thanksgiving 2005 Robert Creeley
All five years in one PDF
In Memorandum
God Damn, Poetry Persists !
an introduction
Innocuous enough, Thanksgiving is the most appropriate means to hold this kind of thing. That thing is an odd blending of cuisine and poetry. I am a chef in my day job and how I come to understand art is through this first love. Cuisine has a natural ease to bring out many complex ideas. From seemingly simple foods delightful combinations create, on the palate, sensation that are unlike any experienced previously. And a dinner party, virtual or not, poetry or food, is a as meaningful a gathering for any group of people to honor anyone! Poetry like bread, grows stale if left on the counter overnight.
Love is not easy. This began as a farewell toast to Charles Bernstein on his leaving from Buffalo. He always recalled my profession and I could think of no greater thing, than to cook for him and all who would attend such a thing.
After the positive responses of this menu poem, I decide to continue and choose Forrest as the guest of honor. He came to read in Buffalo that October. His poetic presence overwhelmed me and I was so taken with his work that it seemed natural. Both of these writings also occurred because I did not have the money to either invite them a wonderful restaurant, or to my home for a quite dinner. Thinking of it I still cannot. Kent Johnson treated my partner Donna and I to dinner just the other day. Well poverty has its finer points and these poems, for better or worse, are the fruits of these thorns.
 Nothing would make me happier than to have you over and whip up a meal. If resources were inexhaustible, I would, and can, cook the meals presented. They each are tailored to that particular poet. For instance, Forrest Gander’s meal incorporates regional dishes from all the areas in which he lived. Ozark pudding is of course to celebrate his wife, C. D. Wright. Each series is decidedly different in approach and manner. In my growth as a poet I was able to explore the influence / confluence of the many poets who came into and out of my life. Robert Creeley is no more a brighter star in my being than Kent Johnson and these small poorly written poems are in no way the wonderful tribute I would be able to present, if I could only cook these out. Render these words down into the rashers of that feeling that says, holy fuck, that action this writer performed in their meaningless task as poet in a time when the world cares nothing for poets – this poet means everything to me! This is my thanking Charles, Forrest, Kent, Bob, and John for everything. Which means nothing, as it is hard to convey everything that one can honor, is it not? Now pass the potatoes …
Ever & Affectionately,
Geoffrey Gatza
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Ron Silliman has written and edited 26 books to date, most recently Under Albany.
Between 1979 & 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, entitled The Alphabet. In
addition to Woundwood, a part of VOG, volumes published thus far from that project
have included ABC, Demo to Ink, Jones, Lit, Manifest, N/O, Paradise, (R), Toner, What
and Xing. He has now begun writing a new poem entitled Universe. 
