Term
| "thinking of nothing, cramming the back honey of summer into my mouth; all day my body accepts what it is" |
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Definition
| Mary Oliver, August. The author identifies as a bear, which is significant because it indicates the different ways poetry can be eaten; in this case, poetry, like the blackberries, are savored by an insatiable appetite |
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Term
| "I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair that all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot." |
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Definition
| Seamus Heaney, Blackberry Picking. The speaker mourns the inevitable fate of the annual blackberry cache. |
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Term
"All the new thinking is about loss. In this it resembles all the old thinking."
"There are moments when the body is as numinous as words" |
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Definition
| Robert Hass, Meditation at Langunitas. Speaks to the power of metaphor. |
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Term
| "the ripest berries fall almost unbidden to my tongue, as words sometimes do" |
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Definition
| Galway Kinnell, Blackberry Eating. The speaker compares the eating of blackberries to the production of words; the effortless way each can play across the tongue. |
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Term
| "I balanced a gleaming can in each hand,/Limboed between worlds, repeating one dollar" |
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Definition
| Yusef Komunyakaa, Blackberries. The speaker feels stuck between the natural and civilized world as he tries to make a living selling blackberries. |
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Term
| "When you have learned their bitterness, they taste sweet" |
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Definition
| Wendell Berry, Fall. The cherries, like some poetry, are an acquired taste. |
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Term
| "I doubt you have a heart in our understanding of that term. You who do not discriminate between the dead and the living" |
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Definition
| Louise Gluck, Vespers. The speaker conveys her feelings of helplessness and sense of failure to a god she deems unfair and heartless" |
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Term
| "My whole life has been stained with pokeberries" |
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Definition
| Ruth Stone, Pokeberries. The speaker feels as though her entire life has been difficult. Like pokeberries, her story and this poem have poisonous roots and staining fruits. |
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Term
| "The scent of apples: I am drowsing off. I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight" |
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Definition
| Robert Frost, After Apple-Picking. Draw parallels between death and harvesting apples. |
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Term
| "The history of apples in each starry core" |
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Definition
| Dorianne Laux, A Short History of the Apple. |
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Term
| "Digging in with the sweet juice running along my hands unpleasantly...getting to the wooden part. Getting to the seeds" |
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Definition
| Jack Gilbert, Hunger. I'm pretty sure this poem is about masturbation... |
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Term
| "common flesh beneath this skin/Like collards. Grainy-sweet, kin." |
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Definition
| James Applewhite, Collards. The speaker and his family are drawn together through the preparation and consumption of food. |
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Term
| "i hold their bodies in obscene embrace/ thinking of everything bu kinship." |
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Definition
| Lucille Clifton, cutting greens. The speaker identifies with the greens she's cutting and sees herself related to the kale the same way collards might be. |
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Term
| "I ate the day/Deliberately, that it's tang/Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb" |
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Definition
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Term
"work that must be done before the rest of their work be done"
"a baptism, something akin to faith, the daily catch keeping them afloat"
"bless the treaveleres who gather our food, and those who grow it, clean it, cook it, who bring it to our tables. bless the laborers whose faces we do not see-- like the girl my grandmother was, walking the rails home; bless us that we remember" |
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Definition
| Natasha Trethewey, Invocation 1926 |
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Term
| "a five-haired beard of wisdom/trailing from his aching jaw" |
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Definition
| Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish |
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Term
| "how happy they seem even on ice, to be together, selfless, which is the price of gleaming" |
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Definition
| Mark Doty, A Display of Mackerel |
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Term
| "graced not only with chilled wine/ and lemon slices but with compassion and sorrow" |
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Definition
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Term
"each day's/dining/another small dying"
"I am afraid/ I can't always be/ here when you need/ a warm body/ or words; someday |
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Definition
| Four Sonnets About Food, Adrienne Su |
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Term
| "I have cross the lawn,/I have entered/ The hen house" |
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Definition
| Mary Oliver, Farm Country |
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Term
"You are everything to me"
"even beef/ was once just bull/ before it got them degrees"
"You can make anything of yourself, you know-- but prefer to wake me early in the cold" |
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Definition
| Kevin Young, Ode to Chicken |
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Term
| "We who are here present thank the Great Spirit to praise him" |
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Definition
| The Thanksgivings, Harriet Maxwell Converse |
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Term
| "for honey, bees were imported, called "English flies" by the Narragansett |
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Definition
| Campbell McGrath, What They Ate |
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Term
| "I have two kids coming home for Thanksgiving" |
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Definition
| Rick Moranis, My Days are Numbered |
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Term
"her sleep like an untamed, good object, like a soul in a body"
"I caught bees, by the wings, and held them, some seconds, looked into their wild faces"
"I remember the moment the arc of my toss swerved and they entered the corrected curve of their departure" |
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Definition
| First Thanksgiving, Sharon Olds |
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Term
"My mother loves butter more than anyone"
"When i picture the good old days I am grinning greasy with my brother"
"glowing from the inside out, one hundred megawatts of butter" |
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Definition
| Elizabeth Alexander, Butter |
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Term
"Thou still unravished bride of promises"
"as the poet Seamus said you are coagulated sunlight"
"Would French cuisine exist without you?"
"they are not so universal nor so simple and complex an infinite story" |
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Definition
| Linton Hopkins, Ode to Butter |
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Term
| "Before we were herded back to the streetcar line" |
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Definition
| Ruth Stone, American Milk |
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Term
"Back when you could eat Velveeta and call it cheese"
"You (like Ohio and it's vowels) went on forever"
"and held in it by all the things you didn't know would end" |
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Definition
| Liz Waldner, Sad Verso of the Sunny ___ |
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Term
| "overalled in milk's colour, men moved the heart of milk" |
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Definition
| Les Murray, The Butter Factory |
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Term
| "Liederkranz ebullient, jumping like a small dog, noisy" |
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Definition
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Term
| "as if all the apples were talking at once, as if they'd come cold and sour from chores in the orchard" |
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Definition
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Term
"if I never saw those green fingers again it would be too soon"
"we heard what sounded like a gunshot and ran to the back porch to see peach glass everywhere" |
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Definition
| Kevin Young, The Preserving |
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Term
| "Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes. And what a congress of stinks!--" |
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Definition
| Theodore Roethke, Root Cellar |
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Term
| "Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes. And what a congress of stinks!--" |
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Definition
| Theodore Roethke, Root Cellar |
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Term
"More like a vault"
"heard red, sexual red, wet neon red, shining red in their liquid, exotic, aloof, slumming in such company"
"They were beautiful and if I never ate one it was because I knew it might be missed or because I knew it would not be replaced and because you do not eat that which rips your heart with joy" |
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Definition
| Thomas Lux, Refrigerator, 1957 |
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Term
| "but for the common sunshine, the breeze, the largess of the spring" |
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Definition
| Charles Reznikoff, Te Deum |
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Term
"I am the darker brother"
"they send me to eat in the kitchen/ when the company comes,/ but I laugh,/ and eat well,/ and grow strong" |
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Definition
| Langston Hughes, I, Too, Sing America |
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Term
"They taste good to her"
"Comforted, a solace of ripe plums seeming to fill the air, they taste good to her" |
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Definition
| William Carlos Williams, To a Poor Old Woman |
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Term
"They taste good to her"
"Comforted, a solace of ripe plums seeming to fill the air, they taste good to her" |
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Definition
| William Carlos Williams, To a Poor Old Woman |
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Term
| "Things would have been different if I hadn't let Bob climb on top of me for ninety seconds in 1979" |
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Definition
| Jane Kenyon, At the IGA: Franklin, New Hampshire |
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Term
| "She puts her change into my hands, for the old soul slumped against the wall" |
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Definition
| John Olivares Espinoza, Economics at Gemco |
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Term
"this isn't pretty, the sort of thing that can easily be dealt with words"
"what do we call a weight that doesnt fingerpring, wont shift and cant explode?" |
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Definition
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Term
"she knows that she knows nothing of the world, which makes the stoop where she kneels so difficult to rise from"
"and all he can think to call it is appetite. and so he will lie when he kisses his napkin and says Hits the spot" |
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Definition
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Term
| "They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair" |
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Definition
| Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters |
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Term
"I grew to hate them"
"tucked safely among their inner organs"
"I resisted the lessons of the kitchen then, fearing the Faustian exchanges of adults"
"like a recently freed captive of a long-ago war, capable at last of peaceful surrender to my old nemesis, el hambre" |
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Definition
| Judith Ortiz Cofer, Beans: An Apologia for Not Loving to Cook |
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Term
| "as she boiled the beef into submission" |
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Definition
| George Bilgere, Corned Beef and Cabbage |
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Term
"And for once I do not regret the passage of time"
"these days when there is little to love or to praise one could do worse than yield to the power of food"
"the meat of memory. the meat of no change" |
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Definition
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Term
| "what has not lost its savor shall hold us up" |
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Definition
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Term
| "looking plumper, firmer, resurrected" |
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Definition
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Term
| "I come upon your and, you , mine" |
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Definition
| Rennie McQuilkin, The Digging |
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Term
| "Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives-- never closer the whole rest of our lives" |
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Definition
| Seamus Heavey, from Clearances |
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