Gaylord Brewer’s The Poet’s Guide to Food, Drink, & Desire is an immediately delightful and surprising work by one of this country’s best poets. Indeed, the poet himself calls this book a “quirky volume,” the genesis being the desire to create something substantially different and sustained.

Since food “had been increasingly creeping into my poetry,” Brewer writes, and because he had been asked to write anecdotally about recipes by a journal editor, this unusual memoir took shape.

As is the example of his best poems, these recipes are every bit as enjoyable, memorable, and delivered—of course—tastefully.