Bards of the Bluegrass Featured Cocktail: August 20th
Each week, Ars Poetica hosts an intersectional open mic for open conversation and art in support of the campaign to remove Mitch McConnell from the US Senate. Our friend and wine/spirits expert Jordan Zimmerman provides us with a cocktail for each edition of the Bards of the Bluegrass show. Join us this week, from anywhere in the world. This week’s beverage is…
The Poet’s Dream
INGREDIENTS:
1 oz. Ford’s Gin
0.5 oz. Benedictine D.O.M.
1 oz. dry vermouth
2 dashes orange bitters
Glass: Coupe or martini glass preferred
Garnish: Expressed lemon twist
INSTRUCTIONS:
Combine all ingredients with ice in a mixing glass and stir. Strain up into a chilled glass. Garnish.
LOW-PROOF SWAP:
Substitute the gin for Seedlip Garden 108 Non-Alcoholic Spirit. Retain the Benedictine, bitters, and vermouth, reducing the quantity to 0.5 ounces, instead of a full ounce.
THE “WHY”
This riff on a classic gin martini first debuted in the 1949 Edition of Esquire’s Handbook for Host. Utilizing such bohemian nomenclature in a manual geared toward building a textbook-perfect soiree in midcentury America is deliciously ironic. Of what would a poet truly dream?
American author, commentator, satirist and diehard poetry fan H.L. Mencken offers one opinion: He says, "Martinis are the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.” In saying such, Mencken aligns a stiff drink with a poem of stiff structure. The irony, though, is that the author doesn’t pine for rigidity, but for the freedom and flow that rigidity is meant to inspire. Just as a martini may chemically enable a freeer state of mind, the art of poetry and the act of writing it can itself be a form of freedom--even rebellion.
When speaking of rigidity, I think of the American two-party political system. It’s Option A versus Option B. It’s Us versus Them. It’s Me versus The Other. What if, as a collection of artists barred from breaking down the rigidity in the existing system, we focused on the freedom and flow that system could inspire? What if our poetry and our prose and our songs could uplift one representative of that binary in the confidence that art is always progressive? If progress is what we seek, Amy is who we must support in November.
Hencken didn’t just comment on booze and rhyme schemes. He was actually best known for his satirical comments on America’s political system. He writes: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard….On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.:
Prophetic, don’t you think? Alarming, don’t you agree? Let’s harness the power of our art to ensure the satire today doesn’t become the future of our country tomorrow.
Cocktail and Commentary by Friend of Ars Poetica, Jordan Zimmerman.