A bit of cheese

G. K. Chesterton once wrote, "Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."

Of course, I believe he was writing with tongue in cheek (likely savoring a bit of cheddar).

A number of poets have written about cheese, including Chesterton himself ("Sonnet to a Stilton Cheese").

There’s even a Poet Laureate of Cheese: James McIntyre of Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada.

A Scotsman (hooray) who moved to Canada, McIntyre died in 1906 after composing a number of verses about his adopted home, including its cheese making.

Alas, as well as being referred to as "The Cheese Poet" and "The Chaucer of Cheese," he is also sometimes called "Canada’s Worst Poet." (No accounting for taste).

I recently stumbled across another bit of cheese poetics.

CHEE$E
By Joyce Killer-Diller

I think that we should never freeze
Such lively assets as our cheese:

The sucker’s hungry mouth is pressed
Against the cheese’s caraway breast

A cheese, whose scent like sweet perfume
Pervades the house through every room.

A cheese that may at Christmas wear
A suit of cellophane underwear,

Upon whose bosom is a label,
Whose habitat: - The Tower of Babel.

Poems are nought but warmed-up breeze,
Dollars are made by Trappist Cheese.

"Joyce" was actually Thomas Merton, commenting humorously on one of his monastery's major sources of income. (One suspects that Merton himself has posthumously helped the Abbey’s coffers!)