From the Sommelier's Notebook
A sample of poems from David Solway's new chapbook
At long last, analogy magazine has some poetry to present. The occasion today is the release of a chapbook of David Solway’s wine poems, From the Sommelier’s Notebook. Of course these poems are not merely about their overt subject matter. Instead, wine tasting and winemaking serve as metaphorical pretexts to celebrate the heart life. If you’re looking for a gift for a wine lover or a poetry lover or a lover, consider getting this book. It has a lovely design with images from art nouveau master Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) decorating the interior.
Analogy readers will note as well that we’ve added a tab to the menu so you can view previous poems that have appeared here without having to dig through the archives. All poems are available to free subscribers.
6. “Thou art a vinyard,” wrote King Demetrius to his people, “newly blossomed, young, beautiful, growing in Eden. Here are the qvevri for the cellar floor, for fermentation and storage, for the red Saperavi. You are my people, History’s best vintage, here in this vinyard where even rocks ripen in the sun.” He made no account for the blight of mildew and phylloxera. That came later. Everything bad comes later, sometimes before. Everything bad comes one way or another. Even the qvevri cannot keep it out, even here in this vinyard, home to the aphid and blasted by mildew.
8. Life is too short to drink bad wine. - Goethe The vintner knows to celebrate the poorest soil where peat, sand and limestone come together, where decomposed sea life, fossils, oyster shells, and chunks of chalk diversify the terroir. A flat vineyard with more clay and alluvials in the soil gives oozy fatness to the grape and a canopy of green that we do not want. But a poor soil forces root to dig deep into substrate for food and water and gives a hardy grape. The struggle is good. Happy vines make leaves, sad vines make grapes, turning the berry into cups of wine and grains of sand into a rich cuvée.
10. This one, says the expert, smells of coffee grounds and mocha, that one of potting soil and warm plums, another of dried flowers and lavender, and yet another wafts of blackberries, chocolate and Seville oranges with a wink of paprika and tickle of pepper. And so on. The one I most prefer commands its own bouquet, smells and tastes of wine, unmetaphorical wine, wine of no analogies, untranslatable and unique, just wine, the wine that it is.
12. Chardonnay leaches sugar from the wood of the oak barrel. A creamy white, all vanilla and butter, sometime pumpkin, too much, you can ladle it up with a spoon. It is also known as Chablis, unoaked, somewhat more lean and elegant, less caramel on the palate, a trace of salt, a touch flinty. Either way, Chardonnay and Chablis are beautiful names, one for your daughter, the other for your son, enough to stimulate a taste for the exotic if not the transcendent though one means thistle and the other, deadwood.
David Solway is a Canadian essayist, songwriter and poet. Winner of several Canada Council and Writers’ Federation Awards, the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, Le Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal, and a lifetime achievement award from Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, he has published over 30 books. Solway’s writing extends to the fields of travel, translation, education theory, and politics, including Canadian non-fiction bestseller The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity. Previous to From the Sommelier’s Notebook, his most recent volume of poetry was The Herb Garden (Guernica Editions, 2018). His political book, Crossing the Jordan: on Judaism, Islam, and the West, appeared in 2023. He has also released two CDs of original songs, Blood Guitar and Partial to Cain. Solway lives in Vancouver with his wife, author and video content creator Janice Fiamengo.
A very fine balance of acid and fruit, to be savored. I am sure it will keep well too! Thanks for this.
Wonderful to see poetry return to Analogy! Thanks Asa.