Cindy Trisler
September 9, 2002
Post #1534 – 20020909
Dear Daniel Pinkwater,
I’m looking for a poem about oysters which I’m just sure you recited on Garrison Keillor’s show some years ago. I remember the line “nothing slicker, nothing moister..”
I looked through the list of books (whew! such a long list) but didn’t see anything that promised to contain this poem. Didn’t you have an anthology of food poems? I swear I saw that somewhere.
Anyway, I am teaching a group of medium-security prisoners who are in a culinary program and the topic of hated food came up. As their English instructor, I tuned in to their enthusiasm and asked them to write. Results? Several essays on a variety of green things, notably brussel sprouts and rutabagas, but two or three on oysters! (Chicken liver got a good treatment, too.)
I’d love to find that book. Seems like there was something on rutabags, too. I think my students would get a laugh from it.
Daniel replies:
I've never been on Garrison Keillor's show, never contemplated being, etc. Probably you have me mixed up with Roy Blount Jr., who writes cute stuff like that, and I think does appear on that program. I think it's our similar southern accents that confused you.
Yes, it is Roy Blount, Jr., and the poem appears here. -- Ed