Thanks Given Poet

Thanks Given Poet is a chef by profession, though poetry, writing lyrics, and painting came first and never left — not a second career, but a private practice: a way to process what the day-to-day doesn't leave room for. A name earned rather than chosen, shaped by years of traveling widely and letting the history, culture, food, myth, and folklore of other places determine what gets made.

That same curiosity is what led to Bestiarum Culinarium — a personal project, not a professional one. It takes creatures from scripture and folklore across cultures and renders them as structured, reverent recipes, treating the kitchen the way his training taught him to: with discipline, respect, and attention to where something comes from. The kitchen becomes an altar here, and the meal a form of ritual — a chef's craft turned toward myth instead of the menu.

Survival Rhetoric, the poetry collection that follows, comes from the other side of that same instinct. Where the Bestiarum is ritual and order, this is unguarded — raw, confessional writing that moves through pain, failure, and self-reckoning without reaching for easy resolution. It is the therapy underneath the art: a mind working through its own wounds in plain sight, and finding, in the process, moments of clarity and hard-won steadiness.

Two disciplines, one practice: a chef's precision applied to myth, and a poet's honesty applied to survival. Thanks Given Poet marks that shift — from offering to enduring, and back again.

Four Volumes Now Available

Bestiarum Culinarium

A multi-volume mythic cookbook of the world's most feared and storied creatures — their origins, their hungers, and the rituals of their preparation. Click a volume to open it.

Volume I Sacred Feasts of Scripture Bestiarum Culinarium Available on Amazon Kindle +

A first taste from the Scripture volume — click an image to view it full size.

Sacred Feasts of Scripture — sneak peek page 1

Sacred Feasts of Scripture — sneak peek page 2

Bestiarum Culinarium — Japanese Mythology & Folklore

Volume II Japanese Mythology & Folklore Kami, Yōkai, and the Quiet Order of Things Available on Amazon Kindle +

A first taste from the Japanese volume — click an image to view it full size.

Japanese Mythology & Folklore — sneak peek page 1

Japanese Mythology & Folklore — sneak peek page 2

Bestiarum Culinarium — Celtic Mythology & Folklore

Volume III Celtic Mythology & Folklore The Creatures of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Otherworld Available on Amazon Kindle +

A first taste from the Celtic volume — click an image to view it full size.

Celtic Mythology & Folklore — sneak peek page 1

Celtic Mythology & Folklore — sneak peek page 2

Bestiarum Culinarium — Indigenous North American Folklore

Volume IV Indigenous North American Folklore Stories of Turtle Island, Canada and the United States Available on Amazon Kindle +

A first taste from the Indigenous North American volume — click an image to view it full size.

Indigenous North American Folklore — sneak peek page 1

Indigenous North American Folklore — sneak peek page 2

Book Shorts

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Hoofprint Cookies Bestiarum Culinarium

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Vampiric Grove Bestiarum Culinarium

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Locust Tempura Bestiarum Culinarium

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Pre Fall Tartare Bestiarum Culinarium

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Behemoth Osso Buco Bestiarum Culinarium

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Seared Leviathan Flank Bestiarum Culinarium

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Japanese River Imp Bestiarum Culinarium

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Forest Herald Bestiarum Culinarium

Survival Rhetoric

Coming Soon

Where Language Becomes Survival

Survival Rhetoric is the record of a mind refusing to go quiet. Across its poems, TGP writes with raw honesty about pain, failure, and disillusionment — personal wreckage, political anger, and emotional damage laid bare without flinching. Language here functions as both witness and tool, a way of staying conscious and human when everything threatens to pull him under.

Rather than simply documenting collapse, the poems practice a kind of everyday alchemy, turning what's broken into moments of clarity and hard-won insight. Even in the darkest passages, an undercurrent of resilience persists — a refusal to surrender to numbness or despair, and a recurring impulse to transform suffering into something that might still serve life.

In the end, Survival Rhetoric is not defined by its darkness but by its determination to keep moving through it. The hope in these poems is not soft or easy. It is forged.

Three poems that hold the architecture of the book — its spirit, its geography, its refusal to be comforted.

I — The Burn

Practice Alchemy

Man down Man down The burn on my arm gets worse Each instant I acknowledge it I am curious about tomorrow I am also curious how fire Circumstance can smell fear Can dictate consequence I wonder about the next day Yet I never feel obligated to dream I Never fear Waking up Should I I would watch vessels plunge Into the skull of the river Onward to uncertainty Everyone Advises me to go to the hospital I appear concerned when in company At home I practice alchemy In the past my hand has caught fire With pain came clarity I believe most of us Scurry to find reason An aerial view shows us so small Seemingly unorganized Independently Pursuing our own survival Yet carrying ten times our weight In stress alone We do not move in a unified direction We are always willing To burden ourselves with more

II — Southern France

Nice

I stood outside Watched the rain from my balcony Southern France Those well needed brief showers This time trees danced in the wind There was no thunder before the lightning hit Just bolts from the sky Immediately after One could hear car alarms in the distance I remained Still Silent Like I was on the verge Of delivering some Survival Rhetoric A resurrection was taking place I could hear my name being summoned Yet it was called from no definitive direction I pretended I was not around Became a tree and danced in the wind No more stillness No more Silence Not of love Nor what I have come to know as soul Nothing would stop the rain That came abruptly As I stood alone on my balcony The darkness of night Reminded me of southern France Alleys Near the beach that swallowed its natural light Allowed madmen to lurk in shadows I have been in those alleys Lurked in those shadows

III — Consequence

Trains & Soul Mates

She said It has become too difficult to overcome our demons I said Demons are tall tales Like Paul Bunyan Fairness for good people Allah and Jesus She didn't much care for that But for me It was a rather simple philosophy All living creatures Logic, love, and leave Anything more is make believe Anything less is to be deceived Deprived I spoke of looking inside Our conversation ensued for some time It was more a debate Regarding the frailty of human nature I was impressed by her articulation of beliefs The way the train with its passing speed Reflected light off of her smooth yet chiseled face Prominent features Enhanced by the passing moon She spoke of her life experiences The extent of their influences on modern thought I spoke of the early history of America Referencing the Federalist Papers A happening not just a history Undying in my eyes Forever evolving She said Even with that man has built too lush a garden To protect from thieves I agreed

Future Works

Two hundred and fifty years. That is how long this republic has stood — declared in 1776, constituted in 1787, tested at every generation since, and still here. No other democratic experiment of its scale has lasted this long. That is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.

Pax Americana began as a question: what does it mean that it lasted? Not the myth of inevitability, not the sanitized pageant — but the actual stubborn, contested, improbable fact of it. A nation founded on ideals its founders did not fully live, held together by documents that had to be amended, argued over, nearly broken, and argued over again. It survived a civil war. Two world wars. A depression. A cold war. Internal betrayals and external threats and decades of argument about what it was even supposed to be. And it is still here. Still unfinished. Still becoming.

The book renders the founding as fifty dishes — not to diminish it, but to meet it where all serious human business eventually lands: at the table. The war has been cooked. The union has been argued. The governance has been served. What remains is a standing rib roast resting at 130°F — the republic itself, low and slow, still becoming, not quite done. The Cook's Notes do not look away from the contradictions. They do not perform guilt on your behalf either. The historical record is what it is. The table is what it always was: the place where people decide what they share and what they owe each other.

"an opportunity for all to pursue a better life — free from tyranny and oppression." — Thanks Given Poet · America at 250.

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Where the Bestiarum Culinarium puts mythological creatures on the plate, the Potatorium puts them in the glass. Drawing from scripture, mythology, and folklore across cultures, each entry renders a creature, god, or spirit as a structured cocktail recipe — the same reverent discipline applied to the bar as to the kitchen. Elixirs brewed from biblical plagues, philters distilled from fairy lore, libations poured for the restless dead. The draught does not corrupt. It reveals.

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Apep cut into pieces and defeated nightly, only to reform by the next evening's crossing; Anubis presiding over a properly weighted scale; Ammit waiting at the edge of judgment for hearts that fail the test. Twenty gods and guardians drawn from three thousand years of temple and funerary text, cooked with the same dry reverence — and irreverence — as the rest of the series.

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