The Michigan Daily - michignalco
Thursday, December 9, 2010 - 3B
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The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Thursday, December 9, 2010 - 3B
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AllIwant for Xmas
is a book ofpoems
ot that you need more reading seeming trendy. "Not what you see, but
right now, but let's suppose what you perceive: / that's poetry," he
you've got a favorite poetry col- writes. "I'll eat you to live: that's poetry."
umnist, and that you have no clue what In Hayes's poems, poetry is the one, the
to get him (or her) for the upcoming other and more.
holidays. You can't
rely on The New York Seamus Heaney, "Human
Times Notable Books Chain: Poems" (Farrar,
of 2010 list because, Straus and Giroux, $24)
even though one of
its categories is alleg- A fountain pen takes up a "snorkel"
edly "Fiction and of ink and becomes "guttery, snottery."
Poetry," you'll find The "clunk" of a mechanical baler is
only three poetry "cardiac-dull." There's a reason Sea-
listings among the DAVID mus Heaney's poems are as popular as
48 books included LUCAS they are admired. He reminds us that
there. Fortunately, the English language is spoken just as
you have a somewhat zealously in the peat fields of County
more respectable newspaper available to Derry as in the lecture halls of Oxford.
you in Ann Arbor, and it has seen fit to Heaney's English has drunk deeply of
allow me to suggest some of the notable both and still speaks with clarity, sym-
poetry books of 2010: pathy and wisdom.
Sarah Barber, "The Kissing Party" Kay Ryan, "The Best of It: New and
(National Poetry Review Press, $17.95) Selected Poems" (Grove, $24)
SAL AM RIDA/Daily
Baristas demonstrate their creativity through "latte art" and other self-expressive brews.
A caffeinated craft
Local baristas get
creative in fueling
campus through finals
ByANKUR SOHONI
DailyArts Writer
In this December exam season, stu-
dents inevitably make a habit of bundling
up and studying late into the night. And
as a comprehensive solution to the stress
of the month, there's nothing better than
coffee.
Ann Arbor and the University campus
area offer a variety of options for coffee
lovers looking for a fix or students look-
ing for a study pick-me-up. There are the
chains - Starbucks, Biggby, Espresso
Royale. And then there are the locally
owned Ann Arbor coffee shops that stu-
dents, professors and city natives fre-
quent.
The baristas in each shop are vital in
creating shop loyalty and establishing a
warm environment. They stand between
customers and their coffee and represent,
for many, a valuable part of any coffee
shop experience.
"Barista" is Italian for bartender, and in
a similar vein to their pub counterparts,
baristas often invest significant energy
in perfecting their skills to be ready for
whatever the customer may order. While
the idea of the barista may conjure images
of a blank-faced, rote assembly-line job,
a look around Ann Arbor coffee shops -
where students are often the faces behind
the counter - reveals a different picture.
"Being a barista definitely has a lot of
personality, because there's such an inter-
action with the customer," said LSA junior
and Espresso Royale barista Kristopher
Gutowski. "It's a very high-energy job."
Gutowski used to work in The Coffee
House, a small shop in his hometown of
Muskegon, Mich. While the job proper
remains the same, Gutowski said the
extraneous elements of working in each
shop are very different.
"(The Coffee House) was a lot less busy,
because it wasn't right on the corner of a
college campus," he said. "But there are
also a lot of different business practices.
At home ... I worked directly with the
owner, I talked to him, I knew him really
well. Now, there's sort of a distance."
Baristas at smaller coffee shops here
on campus echo Gutowski's feelings con-
cerning the difference between working
with the owner of a local shop or as part
of a chain.
"I haven't worked in any shops that
weren't specialty shops," said Ben Sagi-
naw, a barista at Comet Coffee in Nick-
els Arcade. "This is by far my favorite,
because ... the owner of this shop has a set
of values I can stand behind, and that's a
rarity in business. It is a requirement for
(the employees) to appreciate everything
that goes from the farm to the grocer to
the cup, which I don't think is apparent in
all coffee shops."
A concern for many baristas as they
look to advance their skills is the opportu-
nity to be creative in their jobs and infuse
their own styles into the different drinks
they make. While in larger coffee shop
chains, consistency is paramount, baris-
tas in smaller shops try to do things their
way.
"Starbucks is all about making every-
thing the same," said Jason Bies, an LSA
senior and barista at Caf6 Ambrosia on
Maynard Street. "If you get a French
Vanilla cappuccino at that Starbucks and
you go get a French Vanilla cappuccino at
another Starbucks, they're all supposed to
be the same, and that's just not what (cof-
fee is) about. It's about going places and
having your own individual thing."
Matt Roney, a 2009 graduate and for-
mer Michigan Daily staffer, is a barista at
Lab Cafi on East Liberty Street and was
the lead barista upon the shop's open-
ing in January. Having worked in coffee
shops since he was 17, Roney had the basic
barista skills. But in order to gain experi-
ence with the advanced equipment he was
going to employ at Lab, he traveled to Chi-
cago to train for the job.
Roney highlighted the specific technol-
ogy as a unique characteristic of smaller,
more personally involved coffee shops.
While using Lab's espresso machine,
he talked about the "superautomatic"
machinery that a shop like Starbucks uses.
"I'm not deriding them," he said, "but
they can push a button and out comes the
espresso shot. There are a lot more steps
that go on with a semi-automatic or a
manual espresso machine."
The more complicated techniques
associated with coffee-making in those
smaller shops, as Roney explained, allow
for more personal creativity in the final
product.
"We get to experiment a little bit with
the methods that we use, because the
owners are entrepreneurs and not baris-
tas," he said. "Those of us who have a lot
of experience and a lot of training and
have been doing this for a long time, we're
allowed to try things and work on keeping
our coffee as high quality as we can."
But even in a shop as large as Espresso
Royale, Gutowski finds the opportunity to
express himself through his work.
"It can be a creative job," he said.
"There are definitely instances where,
when it's really busy, it just seems like
the rough-and-tumble of getting custom-
ers their drink as quickly as possible. But
when there's room for creativity, you can
get creative."
One way baristas choose to be origi-
nal is through latte art, which allows the
coffee-maker to "draw" a pattern into
the layer of foam atop a shot of espresso
by pouring in steamed milk. One of these
shapes is a heart, which many baristas
strive to perfect.
At Cafd Ambrosia, Bies and other baris-
tas often experiment with new ingre-
dients and drinks, even beyond coffee.
Among these is "Purple Drink" - what
Bies described as a blueberry, raspberry
and white chocolate steamer. Another
is "Quicksand," which involves putting
cherry flavor in a bottle of Coca-Cola and
then adding cinnamon on top.
"When you're in a place like (Ambrosia),
it's not like, 'You have to make it this way,'
" Bies said. "I know what a bad cappuccino
is, and I know what a really good cappuc-
cino is, and I'm always trying to strive to
make my cappuccino really good."
No matter which shop they work in,
each barista values the same parts of his
or her job. Each shop appears to have its
See COFFEE, Page 4B
Full disclosure: Barber was a classmate
of mine some years ago. Fuller disclosure:
I'm still jealous of her. She makes the lan-
guage I thought I spoke seem unfamiliar,
disconcerting and miraculous. So that
in one poem, "the women's college girls
pass / pert and jodhpured by;" in another,
the "parks of our childhood" are "endless
afternoon" where the "sun (is) as hot asa
mouth." Like those childhood kissing par-
ties, these poems are mysterious, sexy and
memorable.
Anne Carson, "Nox"
(New Directions, $35)
I don't always understand Anne Car-
son, but I don't always understand Ein-
stein either. "Nox" is poetry, but it's also
translation, collage, photography, a time
capsule and - most important- an elegy
to a dead brother. I often don't know
what to make of it, butI am thankful it
has been made. As we enter an age when
readers read readers instead of books,
"Nox" demonstrates that the book itself
can still be a poetic text, an art object, an
offering, a shrine.
Deborah Digges, "The Wind Blows
Openthe Doors ofMyHeart: Poems"
(Knopf, $25)
Much poetry of our age is about as
self-consciously cool and unaffected
as a vodka martini. What a thrill it is,
then, to read poems so linguistically and
emotionally risky. When you read a poet
willing to say "Call out the names in the
procession of the loved," you know you
are in the presence of one who cares
deeply about sound and not at all about
sounding cool. Digges's poems remind
us that poetry fulfills a need; these are
poems we need now.
Terrance Hayes, "Lighthead"
(Penguin, $18)
OK, OK, I haven't actually read this
yet. But poets and readers everywhere
celebrated last week when Hayes won
the National Book Award, because he's
been writing so daringly and so freshly
for so long. Hayes is playful without ever
sounding precious, current without ever
I'm astonished, first, when I read Kay
Ryan's poems - then I'm envious. Her
rhymes are so subtle and inventive, her
patterns of thought so surprising, that I
wish I had written them myself. "Insult
is injury/ taken personally," she writes.
Donate to the Make
A Poet Happy fund.
I think, "of course it is," then realize it's
her thought, her lines, not mine. Her
poems outsmart me, line by line and
thought by thought, and all Ican be,
finally, is grateful.
Richard Wilbur, "Anterooms:
New Poems and Translations"
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $20)
Poetry is supposed to be a young per-
son's game, and Wilbur will turn 90 years
old on March 1. I'm not goingto suggest
that he's sold his soul for poetic youth, but
here is Wilbur's description of dreams:
"a cobwebbed pane.
Where, before our eyes,
All the living and the dead
Meet without surprise."
Too often overlooked because he
failed to be one of the dramatic early
deaths of his generation, Wilbur deserves
the sort of attention he has so long given
the world.
Of course, I've overlooked a shameful
number ofgood books and poets in order
to focus on those I've mentioned here. I
hope, though, that any one of these books
will lead you to those books, and those to
others still. The volume of what's good
should compensate for my own biases.
And if you find the good or the great, I
would accept that as an adequate end-of-
semester gift.
I would also accept cash.
Lucas wants you to stuff his
stocking ... with poems. To do so,
e-mail him at dwlucas@umich.edu.
Pudi gets animated about 'Community'
By PROMA KHOSLA
DailyArts Writer
'Twas two weeks before Christmas,
and "Community" was new; but everyone
was animated, and Abed confused.
Tonight's "Com-
munity" will join the ~ ,
tried-and-true holi-
day tradition of stop- "Abed's
motion claymation in Uncontrollable
"Abed's Uncontrol- Christmas"
lable Christmas." NBC
The episode, writ-
ten by series creator
Dan Harmon and Dino Stamatopoulos
(who plays "Star-Burns"), follows Abed
Nadir (Danny Pudi) as he searches for
the meaning of this special, claymated
Christmas.
"Every day is so different and unique,
and once they presented this script to us
about this episode and said that we were
going to be in stop motion, I was - I mean,
we were all so excited," Pudi said in a con-
ference call last week.
S It's a claymated
Christmas, and as
expected, only
Abed knows it.
The episode begins like a normal
"Community" episode, with the only dif-
ference being the stop-motion style. As
fans would expect, Abed is the first and
only character to notice and decide the
new medium is what makes this Christ-
mas special.
"And then we go on this magical jour-
ney through a winter wonderland," Pudi
explained, "including a trip down Gum-
drop Road - which I have always wanted
to go down - and a number of other plac-
es, and I think we all learned a little bit
about the meaning of Christmas to us as a
study group."
Since the beginning of NBC's under-
stated comedy about Greendale Com-
munity College, Abed has been a clear
scene-stealer with his deadpan dialogue
and slick pop culture references. And
it's no secret that the other characters -
and most of the audience - find him a bit
eccentric.
Pudi said that before his character was
cast, Abed was supposed to be Palestin-
ian. When Pudi, who is half-Indian and
half-Polish, got the part, Abed became
half-Polish as well. Pudi grew up with
traditional Polish Catholic Christmas
celebrations, while his fictional alter-ego
grew up Muslim with Catholic and Chris-
tian influences.
"(Abed) is probably a big fan of Chevy
Chase's 'National Lampoon's Christmas
Vacation,' " Pudi said. Ironically, Chase
plays Pierce Hawthorne, the elderly
Greendale student who makes Creed from
"The Office" seem normal.
For Pudi, being an animated character
in tonight's episode is just one of many
dreams that "Community" is helping him
realize.
"You know, it's very bizarre," Pudi
explained. "One day, you're working with
Pudi hopes that tonight's episode wil be the "'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' for our generation."
Chevy Chase and the next day you're
going to visit a claymation studio where
they have a doll of you.
"I met one of the ladies who was mak-
ing the doll. Actually, I saw her away from
set ... someplace in Los Angeles. She's like,
'I recognize you because I've been work-
ing on your doll.' I was like, 'That's defi-
nitely another first.'"
Stop-motion interests Pudi, who has
a dual degree in communications and
theatre from Marquette University and
previously worked in improvisational
comedy. But, he had never done voiceover
work before and found it to be a challeng-
ing way to convey emotions.
"We're all sort of kids in a sandbox in
preschool - except that we're all adults at
Greendale," he said of the new medium.
"But we're essentially doing the same
thing. We're all learning from each other
and being like, 'Well, this is how I've done
it. How do you guys do it?' And I think
that's largely the reason why we like to
celebrate holidays. Plus, they're just fun -
and there's a dance.
"And the script is really, really funny
and really sharp, but also kind of goes to
these places where, I think, with the stop-
motion, we're able to go a little bit further
in terms of, you know, even more emo-
tional depth and some of the sadness of
the characters, too," he added.
Pudi hopes that the Christmas episode
will help bring characters together in a
way that traditional episodes cannot.
"Yes, I think it's going to rival 'Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Reindeer' for our genera-
tion," he said. "At least that's our hope."