Right up there with the whole starving artist stereotype is the drunk artist stereotype. Depictions of creative types getting tanked abound in the popular imagination. Whether it's Jackson Pollock splattering with a cig and a brew or Charles Bukowski getting into bar fights, artists and writers are known for their penchant for alcohol. Perhaps no writer in the last 200 years of literature said it better than Charles Baudelaire, who wrote: "Get drunk! Stay drunk! On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"
I'm not advocating for alcohol abuse or anything, but all those artists and writers might have been onto something: a reasonable quantity of wine may make you more creative. The wine blog Vinepair reports that folks with a moderate BAC level (0.075) "were ... more likely to come up with 'sudden insights,' since they didn't spend as much time overthinking challenges."
Well, then! If you're looking to celebrate the grape and its myriad powers, look no further than poetry. Given what the tannic beverage has offered quaffers, you know these stanzas are going to be special. So find your perfect pour and let yourself stumble onto those "sudden insights" that a moderate glass can facilitate, enjoying a few poems in the process.
1"I taste a liquor never brewed (214)" by Emily Dickinson
Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro’ endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –
2"Wine" by Pierre Martory
I love the sweet harshness on the tongue
Filling the palate with a promised saliva
Knocking the mute keyboard of the teeth
With raised draperies of which one might say
That memory retains a fleeting trail of them
3"Thirst" by Laura Cronk
4"Sad Wine (I)" by Cesar Pavese
Sipping grappa is nice, but there’s also a pleasure
in listening to the venting of an impotent old man
who’s back from the front and asks your forgiveness.
5"Wine Tasting" by Kim Addonizio
I think I detect cracked leather.
I’m pretty sure I smell the cherries
from a Shirley Temple my father bought me
6"The Ragpickers' Wine" by Charles Baudelaire
Even so, wine pours its gold to frivolous
Humanity, a shining Pactolus;
Then through man's throat of high exploits it sings
And by its gifts reigns like authentic kings.
7"Michael's Wine" by Sandra Alcosser
Venus wobbling in the sky,
the whole valley a glare of ice.
We gather in the kitchen
to make jam from damsons
and blue Italian prunes,last fruit of the orchard
