Sunday Mini-Challenge: Poets in the Kitchen

Hello to all the pond dwellers and visitors to the garden. 

Today, we are donning our aprons in the kitchen and whipping up a dish of words.  We will use food imagery to evoke and/or capture depth & meaning of our experiences, be it a happy or sad one. Consider these poems: 

This Is Just To Say
BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

And our own Marian Kent, in part:  

mother came to him late at night
  one slice of wrapped american cheese
  she offered to his hunger

grit and dirt and hair and mold
  and yells and smacks and hunger and worse
  a boy's childhood

last night like every other night
  this morning like every other morning
  out of his control.

                           Picture credit:   Gloria of Canela's Kitchen 

American poet and critic Ezra Pound once described a poetic image as something that captures an emotional and intellectual complex in an instant of time. Imagery in poetry puts into words what humans experience emotionally, intellectually, and concretely in any given moment. The moment becomes frozen in words, allowing the reader to dwell in and re-experience it every time he or she reads the poem.  

For our challenge we will use food imagery as a backbone of our poem.  Describe a food experience in a moment of time or use it as metaphor or symbol.  This can include the process of preparing the food (paring, boiling, baking, grilling, etc.).

As an alternative, you don't have to write about food but use the sense of Taste (salty, sour, sweet, bitter or flavorful or spicy).  Here is one from Archna Sharma:    

I am in love

and have discovered it
to be a taste:
the ripening fruit of a locust tree
irresistible,
only a sacrament of vows
can contain

And last requirement for the challenge - not more than 14 lines.  Make it short & sweet.

The Sunday Challenge is posted on Saturday at noon CST to allow extra time for the creative process, so please link something new not an unrelated or previously written piece.  This is in the spirit of our Real Toads project to create opportunities for poets to be newly inspired.  Management reserves the right to remove unrelated links but invites you to share a poem of your choice on Open Link Monday.

I look forward to your poetic servings.  Happy weekend to all ~  

Grace (aka Heaven)

To read more on Poetic Devices