Hip Hops

A beautiful hardcover Pocket Poets collection of poetic tributes to beer from around the world and through ages.

From the ancient "Hymn to Ninkasi" (the Sumerian goddess of beer) to eighth-century Chinese poet Li Bai's "Bring in the Ale" to Robert Graves's "Strong Beer," the poems collected here attest to humankind's long attraction to the foamy and intoxicating product of malted grains. A surprising variety of poets have penned tributes to the brew; their tantalizing poems include Robert Burns's "John Barleycorn," Edgar Allan Poe's "Lines on Ale," Frank O'Hara's "Beer for Breakfast," Sylvia Plath's "The Beer Tastes Good," Muriel Rukeyser's "Beer and Bacon," and Tom Waits's "Warm Beer and Cold Women." Whether pulling up to the celestial bar in Keats's "Mermaid Tavern" or to the grittier, jazzier one in Carl Sandburg's "Honky Tonk in Cleveland, Ohio" (where "the cartoonists weep in their beer"), lovers of beer and poetry are sure to find something to celebrate in these tantalizing pages.CHRISTOPH KELLER is the author of prizewinning novels, plays, and essays in German, as well as the Swiss best-selling memoir The Best Dancer. He is the coauthor of a forthcoming biography of the American poet Muriel Rukeyser, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf. He divides his time between New York City and St. Gallen, Switzerland.LINES ON ALE

Fill with mingled cream and amber
     I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
     Through the chamber of my brain --
Quaintest thoughts -- queerest fancies     
     Come to life and fade away;
What care I how time advances?     
     I am drinking ale today.

--Edgar Allan Poe