#134: Hungry for Poetry

Feb 15, 2021

Dear reader,

I've found myself feeling slightly obsessed with food of late. In a recent newsletter, writer and interviewer Madeleine Dore's wrote: "Don't yuck someone else's yum – including your own!" Reading that line got me thinking about all the different ways in which we talk about food, write about food, think about food.

For today's newsletter, I’ve picked out a few lovely food poems for you to devour. Plus, some accounts I follow for food writing: Gharelu, Via Dil, Goya Journal, Archana Pidatala.

Onto The Great Poetry Feast, in case you're hungry for some verses:

1. Cook by Jane Hirshfield

Each night you come home with five continents on your hands:
garlic, olive oil, saffron, anise, coriander, tea,
your fingernails blackened with marjoram and thyme.
Sometimes the zucchini's flesh seems like a fish-steak,
cut into neat filets, or the salt-rubbed eggplant
yields not bitter water, but dark mystery.
You cut everything into bits.
No core, no kernel, no seed is sacred: you cut
onions for hours and do not cry,
cut them to thin transparencies, the red ones
spreading before you like fallen flowers;
you cut scallions from white to green, you cut
radishes, apples, broccoli, you cut oranges, watercress,
romaine, you cut your fingers, you cut and cut
beyond the heart of things, where
nothing remains, and you cut that too, scoring coup
on the butcherblock, leaving your mark,
when you go
your feet are as pounded as brioche dough.

2. In Rhapsodic Praise of Biscuits by Joan Leotta

Biscuits transubstantiate from
buttermilk or Lily brand flour and
Clabber Girl baking powder
into a heavenly delight.
So, it is only right that they
are the first item passed
after prandial prayer.
Plucking one from the basket
passed to me,
my fingers tingle as they brush
the lightly crisped top.
Slowly, I separate the still warm
bread of perfection
into two perfect halves,
tamping down the steam
with a pat of real butter
and a swirl of honey.
I lift one section to mouth
and savor the
sweetness of the topping,
aided and abetted by the salty,
creamy butter amid the
biscuit crumbs.
Edible perfection.

3. Watermelon by Lynn Ungar

You know
what summer
tastes like—the pink flesh
of a generous earth,
this rounded life
fully ripe, fully flavored.
How could you be ashamed
at the tug of desire?
The world has opened itself to you,
season after season.
What is summer's sweetness
but an invitation to respond?
There is only one way
to eat a watermelon.
Bury your face
in the wetness
of that rosy slab
and bite.

4. Sous-Chef by Ellen Bass

I like cutting the cucumber, the knife slicing the darkness
into almost-transparent moons, each
with its own thin rim of night. I like smashing
the garlic with the flat of steel
and peeling the sticky, papery skin from the clove.
Tell me what to do. I’m free of will.
I carve the lamb into one-inch cubes.
I don’t use a ruler, but I’d be happy to.
Give me a tomato bright as a parrot.
Give me peaches like burning clouds.
I’ll pare those globes until dawn. The syrup
will linger on my fingers like your scent.
Let me escape my own insistence.
I am the bee feeding the queen.
Show me how you want
the tart glazed. I still have opinions,
but I don’t believe in them.
Let me fillet the supple bones from the fish.
Let me pit the cherries. Husk the corn.
You say how much cinnamon
to spice the stew. I’ve made bad decisions,
so I’m grateful for this yoke
lowered onto my shoulders, potatoes
mounded before me.
With all that’s destroyed, look
how the world still yields a golden pear.
Freckled and floral, a shimmering marvel.
It rests in my palm so heavily, perfectly.
Somewhere there is hunger. Somewhere, fear.
But here the chopping block is solid. My blade sharp.

5. How it Transforms by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer

a pinch
of cumin,
a pinch
of salt,
the scent
of lemon
and
ginger-
tell me,
what else
I should
have
done
with my
anger

6. Chocolate Milk by Ron Padgett

Oh God! It’s great!
to have someone fix you
chocolate milk
and to appreciate their doing it!
Even as they stir it
in the kitchen
your mouth is going crazy
for the chocolate milk!
The wonderful chocolate milk!

7. Begin Again by Vidhi Pandit (excerpt)

Take 2 cups of longing
and set it to dry.
Make sure it's unadulterated.
Marinate 100 grams of secrets
with hung dreams.
Make sure they're juicy.
Brew a bowl full of songs
that define you.
Make sure they're handpicked.

Read the full poem on the website here.

8. Comfort food by Suchandra Bose(excerpt)

so much of you is comfort
that our syllables dandle amid
your hushed gaze
recoil into
the promise of wordlessness
and bemuse the boiling broth.

and of course, the curve of your
flabs is the routine
of a curdled
nourishment
hidden in your
dependency.

Read the full poem here.

Recipes I saved during the pandemic and will hopefully make in the near future:

-Apple Mug Cake in 1 Minute
-Chilli Oil
-Grilled Potato and Green Bean Salad
-Strawberry Spoon Cake
-Tomato Pie
-Emily Dickinson’s Coconut Cake recipe

Recommended Listening:

via Music For One Apartment And Six Drummers

1. Music For One Apartment And Six Drummers (AMAZING!)
2. The Night We Met - Huron
3. Complaining, Comparing, and Coping - Letters from Esther Perel
4. Do Your Best - John Maus
5. This could be my last song - Frank Watkinson
6. Black Rain - Rhye

Links of the Week:

1. Ootje Oxenaar, who habitually and whimsically redesigned the spines on his books

2. An Illustrated Children’s Book on the Pandemic and Our Environmental Future (my latest piece on Hyperallergic, where I talk to author and climate advocate Tom River-Carnav and his sister and illustrator Bee Carnac about their brilliant book What happened when we all stopped. Please email me if you'd like the PDF of the book)

3. Pictoplasma’s first magazine issue is out.

4. Night Sky

5. A Collection of Vintage Paper Airplanes

6. Observing the change of seasons over lockdown, artist Sammi Lynch summons a sense of place and memory

7. Cab Ride (Drive a train, forever, through a dreamlike land)

8. Family Portraits by Maria Mavropoulou

9. Your Simple Guide For How To Start Scrapbooking

10. Try out this Remote Experience Generator

This is my newsletter: Vishal Kumaraswamy

Thrilled to share this Sunday’s takeover of This is my newsletter by my dear friend Vishal Kumaraswamy 🌻 His newsletter talks about love, about how it manifests and love as a responsibility. “Love is unlearning, it is the transcending of man-made boundaries of gender, caste, religion or language, it is realising you're allowed to grant yourself permission to have conflicting thoughts and opinions.”

He’s also given some fabulous recommendations - YouTube visual white noise channels + podcasts, books + music to check out.

Read it here: https://thisismynewsletter.substack.com/p/this-is-my-newsletter-28-vishal-kumaraswamy

New on the Website:

1. Artist Showcase: Krittika Mittal

“A lot of my artworks club from a common theme of finding joy and comfort in everyday things and situations. I think I'm someone who tries to create her own happiness and you'll see it being reflected in my artwork- they're mostly about a single person's perspective. I like to use warm colour palettes and draw things which feel relatable. For example, the idea for the picnic artwork came to me after I started seeing people stepping out during the pandemic and finding respite in these small outdoor gatherings.”
-Krittika Mittal

Check out Krittika Mittal's gorgeous illustrations here.

2. Odes as Attempts to Break Out of Thought Spirals by Kartikay Agarwal (excerpt)

My Insecurity writes to me (like a smothering guardian angel.)

You are too happy too quick,
I must hold on to you,
Your high-brow in my clasp,
Nudging you, a reminder – the world
Does not revolve around you.
And the moment everyone sees
You, they see right through you
And these made up images,
Piercing directly across—
Skin. Bone. Heart. Soul.

Read Kartikay's musings in its entirety here.

3. Dearly Beloved by Shristi Sainani

To the dolt who cried a thousand tears,

Your present cheery and contention is worthy of embrace.
Oh how many flowers bloomed
Looking at your smile reach for
the ends of those hazel eyes,
you carry beautifully with pride.
Your flushed cheeks lit an entire streetscape,
rue Montorgueil.
Your eyelashes have carried corpses.
Your ears, grams of timid symphonies.
Your lips, the weight of shrivelled lies.
How many coral roses shall be shot out of an airgun
To celebrate your revolt?
A revolution you strike against the everyday ordinary violence.

Sit upright.
It has all just begun.