Autumnal Poems and Land Grant's Lawnraker
The Beer: Lawnraker Oktoberfest
It has been suggested to me that I would be remiss to post on any beer but an Oktoberfest on October 1. Luckily, I happened to have a single can of Land Grant’s take on that style, called Lawnraker, left in my fridge. Or I did have a single can left, until I cracked it open to jot down these notes on autumn beers and autumn poems.
From 1872-1990, the beer served at Oktoberfest was Marzen, and Land Grant stays true to that style for their Oktoberfest offering. (Since 1990, the beer served at Oktoberfest has officially been a style called “Festbier” - lighter in color, lower ABV, and less intense than a Marzen.) Lawnraker is just what most Americans would expect of a Marzen, I think: toasty but dry, no hop aroma but definite toffee and caramel. A lovely orange-amber in the glass (versus the darker brown of a Marzen, historically).
If I had a lawn to rake, I’m sure Land Grant is right: their Lawnraker Oktoberfest would be an apt reward for doing so.
Autumn Poems: “l(a” by E.E. Cummings and “Song for Autumn” by Mary Oliver
My all-time favorite autumn poem is E.E. Cummings’s “l(a)”:
The first poem in Cummings’s 95 Poems.
I love teaching this poem. I just project it on the screen and ask students what they notice. “Is it even a poem? How do we read it out loud?” I ask. As the poem’s many valences and levels start to click, I love to watch my students’ understanding dawn. They see that the lower-case “L” that starts the poem also looks like a “one,” because of its serif. That “one-nesss” echoes the indefinite article that it precedes: “a.” Both “one’ and “a” are things singular and alone, by nature. Later in the short poem, in line 7, the word “one” sits alone, followed by a single “l” in line 8, further underscoring the connection between the number one and the letter L. So is it “loneliness” that surrounds the leaf that falls in the parentheses? Or is it 1 leaf falling, landing not in loneliness but rather in its opposite: in “one / l / iness” (7-9)? To me, such questions - rather than answers - are what distinguishes poetry from prose.
I wrote my dissertation on experimental poetry, so this one is a pretty obvious win in the my “fall poetry” category. But “lonely” isn’t the way I feel when I drink Land-Grant’s Lawnraker, even when I do so in the middle of a long and isolating pandemic.
Land-Grant is a brewery in the Franklinton neighborhood of my hometown: Columbus, Ohio. I’ve been a fan since they opened there in 2014, and was an especially frequent visitor in 2018-2019, when I lived in Columbus.
So drinking a Land-Grant beer makes me think of the time I watched the eclipse there with my brothers:
My sister hand-made that baby mural, hanging from my brother and sister-in-law’s front porch, in front of my home-state flag.
Or when we celebrated after my big brother married my sister-in-law. Where I watched Columbus Crew and OSU football games. In short, it reminds me of Ohio, where I just visited for a few weeks, with my little sister - a visit full of wonderful (socially distanced, outdoor) hangouts with family.
So a Land-Grant beer needs an autumn poem that reminds me of closeness and togetherness, and of autumn as a time of peaceful settling in, rather than an ending. A pome like Mary Oliver’s lovely “Song for Autumn:”
From Poetry magazine (May 2005), via poetryfoundation.org.
In this poem, fall is not a time of death or decay, an end of the growing season. It’s a time of coming together, starting with that gorgeous opening image of leaves longing for the earth, finding a peace there that the “nothingness of the air” could not provide (lines 1-5). Similarly, the trees welcome birds “to sleep inside their bodies,” a snuggling coziness with which I associate our colder months (8-9). Even the sharp, cold wind of fall is a friendly visitor: “The wind wags its many tails” (15-16).
These images resonate with the way I enter my favorite seasons. I love fall’s sense of settling in, snuggling up, and the eagerness I feel for cool weather to arrive, tail wagging.
