4.01.2004

Many hundreds of thousands of delighted & delightful hgpoetics Readers over the centuries have queried your obedient Servant privately as to his background, provenance, auspices, etc. with respect to Le Poetique de Fromage, as the rock-solid Cheese Poetics Movement (or the New Moldyism) is known in parts French. Well, I wrote wryly, rocking back in my Ancestral Rocking Chair (handed down by hand through the family for generations since the days of its handsome progenitor & chair-maker Reginald Golde, 1543 - & still rockin'), & leaning into my new-fangled Compooter Writing Utensil, I-He continued to write:

"Cheese. The very word evokes a fume of memories. I was born in the small village of Odeur-de-la-Cesse, in southern Burgundia: a place famed for its local "sheddeur" (a type of Gallic cheddar, known for the special "pop" sound it makes when vigorously engaged or overexcited), where my family (the Gilles-Fichette line, direct descendants of Gethoff Ufh MaHatte, first Lout of Burgundia) controlled & officially manipulated the "Wheeling of the Cheese Order" (as the trucking industry was called in those far-off days). The Wheeling of the Cheese has always been a Gilles-Fichette monopoly (monopoly - the word itself rolls off the tongue like a mighty 6-ft. cercle de sheddeur!), and my father, Conte Louise Louise de Gilles-Fichette (Quant ou Wont), always assumed I would assume the assumption of his role (rolle, roule, whatever) in the same fashion as he did in his time, and as his father had, and as his fatter grandfather had, and as his fattest greatest great-grandfather had, and so on; however, in 1657, while on a visite to Paris, I was struck by a mangy cur of a cheval in the left knee, and have been cursed by the black curse of a severe limp since that time, which unfortunate mishap confined me strictly to leisure activities, such as cheese sniffing, cheese tasting, cheese engorgement, reading, meditating, vegetating, and the composition of verse.

In my spare time, as well, I have occupied my giddy mind in the pursuit of foreign quarrels, as my Uncle Henri IV advised me (in the famous English (Albion perfidieuse!!) play of the same name, by Guillaume Slacksweare, I believe). Wait just a darn minute! That's not what I was going to write here. This dang compooter's gittin' away from me. Start agin. In my spare time, I have spent my sparest time working out a complex Theory of Cheese Poetics. Now Cheese Poetics cannot be reduced to a sound bite (no pun intended!): yet I feel it can fairly be said that the substance, the core, the essence, the saveur essentiale, of the Theory, may be packaged and rolled into the following apothegm:

There is a poetry of life and there is a poetry of poetry, and these two are one. And they meet in cheese.

This is a direct quote from Wallace Stevens, who was no mean connoisseur de fromage.

- Now if you will excuse me, dear excusive Reader - my Uncle Henri is calling me from the Jerusalem Chamber. I believe he left his crown on a pillow there, with some cheese, and I must fetch them immediately, there is a tide in the affairs of cheese and there is no time to lose. Farewell & au revoir & for the BBC News Hour, this is Robin Lustig saying: Goodby.

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