"Pretzels Come to America"

I've been hyping Mark Yakich's poetry for a couple of years, and thought I might share one of his poems here. Mark Yakich has one of the very best websites among modern poets -- drawings, photos, examples of his work. This example comes from "Peeling Potatoes" and also appears on his website:

PRETZELS COME TO AMERICA

Legend has it that Houdini, the son of a rabbi, picked his first lock
Because he wanted a piece of boysenberry pie his mother was keeping

Dead-bolted in the pantry. A busted closet means trouble. Doesn't it
Seem that as soon as you get one thing fixed in the house something else

Falls apart? Say, I might as well punish myself for Mommy's cancer,
Because who else is there at the foot of the bed to discomfit. Bedrooms

Really are nice in all-white. Sheets, curtains, lamps, laser-white metal.
The most important place for a favorite painting is opposite the bed:

The last impression you see at night, the first when you rise. Upstairs
The house has an expiration date, just as Henry James did. Poor Henry

Was criticized for not liking dumb people. He avoided women especially
Because one lady had fallen in love with him and then committed suicide.

They say that before Henry died he thought he was Napoleon. And it
Turned out that he did know a lot about Napoleon, just not the right sorts

Of things that made dying easier. Houdini, James, Napoleon. Neither
Houdini nor James liked to be called by their first names. But Napoleon

Loved his first name so much he destroyed many lives in order to
Keep it popular. Three great men, three great holes. Like in the pretzel.

Medieval monks gave pretzels to children who had memorized their Bible
Verses and prayers. To reinforce a lesson: the three holes in the pretzel

Represent the Christian trinity. Today there are 28 different kinds of
Pretzels in the world and that number continues, in fits and starts, to grow.

Hi Bob

Thanks for the poem, I had not been aware of Mark Yakich. Several thoughts occur to me.

In fact my favorite food-related recent American poem is "Osso Buco" by Billy Collins. I thought of posting a poem in response to a poem but decided not to. For the curious:

http://www.breakoutofthebox.com/ossobuco.htm

In our travels we went to the Brotmuseum in Ulm. I was very surprised to see that pretzels went back to pre-Roman Germany, and the early examples had extremely odd shapes, sometimes with spikes and prickles. The three hole design was not an eternal feature of the thing. On the other hand I wondered how they were able to provide examples of ancient pretzels -- were these early pretzels fossilized, or represented in clay, or drawn in murals?? My German is good but the labeling was somewhat skimpy. Our hostess near Ulm, a distant cousin, ran a small farm in a village, and had the sort of oven that would have been current in the area 2000 years ago. The barn had a thick stone wall, and the oven was simply a cavity built into the wall. You filled the cavity with burning wood, then scraped out the wood and inserted the bread. The cooking was entirely due to the residual heat stored in the rocks. She made me a beautiful "Zopf" to take back to America and somehow it got through customs.

Many of my European friends seem not to understand the concept of the large "soft pretzel" which is so popular in NYC and Philadelphia. But I am pretty sure I had something similar in München, with a "Mass" of beer under some chestnut trees...

Frank