Sweets and Sonnets: Snickerdoodles and r–p–o–p–h–e–s–s–a–g–r

One of the things that I love about poetry is the sheer silliness of it all. Sure, there are tomes of hefty verses, like all twenty-four (far too many) books of the Iliad. Scholars might tell you that poetry is a Very Serious Thing Indeed, and they’re probably right. But in a world where cookies may be named things like “snickerdoodle,” it would be dreadfully boring to always be drudging through ancient verses about sheep and shipwreck.

A snickerdoodle is an odd thing—at first it starts out like a sugar cookie, and then all of a sudden, there’s a detour calling for cream of tartar of all things, and then you’re rolling in cinnamon sugar and ending up with what is essentially a very round morsel of cinnamon toast. Delightful and tiny, as many of the poems penned by the renowned e e cummings, who used the modernist freeform style to turn poetry topsy-turvy and give it a good shake awake.

e e cummings was careful as he was playful, and for all his exuberance, he was quite deliberate in his poetry. I admire how exact he could be in his whimsicality. He seems like the type of person who would bake a mountain of cookies for no reason, and level off his measuring cups all the while. To that end, we bring you one of our favorite cookies, The Snickerdoodle, with one of our favorite e e cummings poems. This recipe is adapted, like so many of our recipes, from the King Arthur Flour company.

Ingredients:

1 cup vegetable shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons cream of tartar*
1 teaspoon baking soda*
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
cinnamon-sugar

* If you do not have cream of tartar (who ever has cream of tartar?) then substitute 2 teaspoons baking powder instead of both the cream of tartar and baking soda (2 teaspoons total, not 3!)

All the ingredients will go into one bowl, so even though the original recipe says a “medium-size” mixing bowl, we go for the largest one we have. Start by creaming the shortening and the sugar, preferably with a mixer or a friend who is enthusiastic about stirring. Beat in the eggs, until the mixture becomes light and light-colored. The idea is to whip air pockets into the mix, allowing the cookies to be pillow-soft.

Add in the vanilla extract, the cream of tartar and baking soda (or the baking powder, depending on what you’re using), and salt. Add the flour a little bit at a time, mixing in between to keep it uniform. I find it best to heat the oven while I shape the cookies, so it doesn’t idle for too long. Set the heat at 400ºF and line a couple baking sheets.

Spoon dollops of dough into a bowl of cinnamon sugar and toss to make sure they’re fully coated. Just rolling the dough around tends to pick up more sugar than cinnamon, but gently shaking the bowl will allow the cinnamon to kick up a little and add more color and flavor to the cookie coating.

Arrange the cookies on a cookie sheet, a nice baker’s dozen for each sheet. I truly did not understand why it was called a baker’s dozen until I started making cookies—thirteen may be awfully ominous but more importantly, it is delicious. I use a jam lid to press them down flat, but any flat-bottomed glass etc. will do the trick.

The cookies should bake about 12 minutes or so until they are crisp on the edges and soft in the middle. Let them cool completely on a wire rack, and then marvel at the little cracks that crumble on the edges and the delightful dusting of cinnamon sugar spread across the top, like fairytale moss carpeting an enchanted forest.

The name “snickerdoodle” is all children’s laughter and empty calories, and I can think of no better cookie to accompany a clever and silly poem. Once upon a tutoring job, I was responsible for a set of three brothers, all of whom were very bright and delightful children. To my dismay, the older two came home from middle school Language Arts class declaring war on grammar and poetry as a concept. As they munched on Cheez-Its and cookies, we talked at length about punctuation and the irrational mess that the English language has made of, well, language. Their tirade hit a wall when I brought them one of my favorite e e cummings poems.

r–p–o–p–h–e–s–s–a–g–r 

                                 r–p–o–p–h–e–s–s–a–g–r 

                       who

  a)s w(e loo)k

  upnowgath

                     PPEGORHRASS

                                      eringint(o-

  aThe):l

               eA

                    !p:

S                                                a

                            (r

  rIvInG                      .gRrEaPsPhOs)

                                                to

  rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly

  ,grasshopper;

At very first glance, the rational human mind boggles upon seeing the page, in that way where you wonder what in tarnation is a ppegorhrass and isn’t this all just a jumble of letters and who is this e e fellow etc. etc. The space-time continuum wobbles just a little bit. Naturally, you think as you reach for a fistful of cookies, there’s art and then there’s art and well, this nonsense is not art, not like you’ve ever seen.

As you munch on your spiced sugar snacks, you might notice that the only discernible word on the page is “grasshopper,” whatever that means. But look again as—there!—you missed it—there! up there!—the grasshopper jumps across the keyboard, flitting from key to key. True to the whimsy of e e cummings, the words become more clear as you piece the broken bits together and see the—there!—grasshopper jumping about as your eyes jump about looking for meaning.

Put more simply, the letters are broken in a way across the page as if your eyes are following a fleeting grasshopper. The jumbled letters linked together form a sentence, describing the grasshopper in motion as it itself tries to make sense of the poem. The letters form an anagram that eventually spells “grasshopper,” as if the grasshopper itself does not form until it rearranges all the letters just so. Such a form mimics the mind as it tries to rearrange the poem into a sensible narrative structure.

And that’s what I love about poetry: that moment of confusion, of brain-fog, of “wha—?” before I see the poem on the page. The great theatrical reveal of a poem has all the satisfaction of a grasshopper’s self-discovery. The playful creativity of e e cummings and the grasshopper itself, hopping about and trying to find expression across the page, embodies the essence of poetry. Poetry is about using a form, something more than ordinary language, to discover something about oneself. Rather than say, “A grasshopper finds himself by hopping about and so does the human mind,” e e cummings let the grasshopper of his mind scamper about the page and in so doing, said just as much, but twice as clever.

I have often felt that poetry causes my mind to jumble, even a straightforward sonnet, because my mind is always hopping about, trying to see what it is that I’m missing. e e cummings allows the reader that naiveté, that novelty, which quickly becomes discovery and delight. Poetry, as we’ve said before, is about potential, about that feeling between confusion and understanding. We started this poetry project as a springtime series, and perhaps nothing is more representative of spring than a grasshopper dancing about, trying to figure out what in the world is going on around here.