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.
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
