David Young combines autobiography, poetry, nature writing, and food writing in a book that celebrates life without denying its losses and mysteries. Organized by the months of the year, Seasoning traces the passing of time and the cycles of loss and renewal, meditating on the human place in the natural world. Set in northeastern Ohio, where the author has lived and worked for close to forty years, Seasoning demonstrates that an "unremarkable" place - no grand scenery, no special claims to beauty - can be the perfect setting in which to learn about animals, plants, food, geology, history, weather, and time. Coming to terms with place and time, and connecting them, the author suggests, may be our true task in life. Among the many distinctive Features of this book are the recipes, arranged seasonally and revealing Young's preference for natural foods prepared with care.
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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Skillful and astute, Young is a wordsmith who brings his own particularly satisfying sense of place--call it a "bioregional" awareness of his Ohio surroundings--to this creative melding of culinary segments and lyrical observations on the changing seasons. Presented in a format of musings combining lyrical vignettes, recollected adventures, and a rich peppering of poems (of his own making, as well as the poetry of others), Young's book also unveils a bevy of enticing recipes arranged by month. The reader may be inspired to cook up penne with vodka on a freezing January night, or perhaps you will concoct a cool meal of tasty eggplant caponata in the heat of a summer's afternoon, if either your garden or the corner market yields fresh produce. Delighting in words and in the industry of cooking for enjoyment, Young yields an exceptional harvest for readers. Alice Joyce
From Kirkus Reviews
A soulful and sage calendar of monthly associations``things of place seen in time''from poet Young. Northern Ohio is Young's patch, and he has assumed the poet's ancient obligation to mediate between its citizenry and the sacredness of their landscape, to feed a spiritual hunger, taste the land in its bountywheat to wineserve it forth in words and the occasional well-turned recipe. Young appreciates that any place can ripen in the fullness of time, when it has been allowed to season like firewood, even his own undramatic turf, a homely ``nowhere in particular'' from which he wrings delight, right down to its nickname of Firelands, after the Connecticut settlers whose farms back east were burnt out from under them by the British army. There are harmonies to be discovered in the land, particularly when fused with time (recollection, immersion, anticipation), a concatenation of stimuli amounting to a sense of place. Young approaches each month with deliberation, searching for aptness: the heavy settling of February; June's emphatic turn to summer, ``into long twilights and the deep night''; October's ``prolonged, occult pauses, temporal backwaters and time warps, indolent warm days when leaves lie around on the ground.'' Poems stud the book, pungent summoning obliquities, so too stunning reflections on the loss of his wife and his mother, cathartic in their skillful economy. The chapters end with a saturnalia of recipes so that Young may celebrate the comedy of winter squash, give a great inclusive hug to all the elements that fill his days. Rarely does Young lose his touch (for instance, with a preachy comment like ``being is a momentous gift, greater than any web site''), and even then it feels like an honest mistake. An elegant pot-au-feu of days, sensual and heart-gladdening. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worth foraging for...,
By Mike A. Luster (Mammoth Spring, AR) - See all my reviews
This review is from: SEASONING: A POETS YEAR, WITH SEASONAL RECIPES (Hardcover)
Ohio poet David Young weaves together poetry, natural history, autobiography, and food in a wonderfully imagined and executed series of twelve monthly chapters, each rounded out with a gathering of recipes based on what's in season and influenced by an adept mingling of native ingredients and Italian technique. He'll send you out in search of wild mushrooms and inspire a hunt for his own well crafted poems and translations. Highly recommended.
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