by Phyllis Stowell and
Jeanne Foster
In poems from as varied women poets such as Jane Kenyon, Lucille Clifton, Anne
Sexton, and Sylvia Plath, food emerges as a reoccurring and central metaphor
in the way women live, in the pulse of the everyday, and as a vehicle for the
exotic. From coffee to caviar, from potatoes to dandelions—even in hunger
and anorexia—the metaphors of food have worked like yeast in the imagination
of these poets.
Includes poems by: Ai • Eavan Boland • Gwendolyn
Brooks • Sandra Cisneros • Lucille Clifton • Emily
Dickinson • Carolyn Forche • Isabella Gardner • Jorie
Graham • Linda Gregg • Marilyn Hacker • Jane
Hirschfield • Linda Hogan • Shirley Kaufman • Jane
Kenyon • Maxine Kumen • Denise Levertov • Joe-Anne
McLaughlin • Naomi Shihab Nye • Sharon Olds • Martha
Rhodes • Edna St. Vincent Millay • Anne Sexton • Ntozaki
Shange • Jean Valentine • Ellen Bryant Voigt • And
many more. . . .
The
Traveling Onion
When
I think how far the onion has traveled
just
to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all
small forgotten miracles,
crackly
paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly
layers in smooth agreement,
the
way knife enters onion
and
onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history
revealed.
And
I would never scold the onion
for
causing tears.
It
is right that tears fall
for
something small and forgotten.
How
at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting
on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but
never on the translucence of onion,
now
limp, now divided,
or
its traditionally honorable career:
For
the sake of others,
disappear.
--Naomi Shihab Nye
Available editions:
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Paperback
ISBN: 1-929918-24-0
Price: $16.00
Publishing Date: October 2002
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