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Poetry and Food

Feast on this smorgasbord of poems about eating and cooking, exploring our relationships with food.

By The Editors

A still life of bread, fruit, and cheese with dark wine bottles

aturaleza muerta con botellas, frutas y pan por Goya

Planting and Harvesting

- The Raspberry Room
Karin Gottshall
- Harvest Song
Jean Toomer
- Blackberrying
Sylvia Plath
- The Rice Fields
Zilka Joseph
- Plum
Charles Atkinson
- In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden
Matthea Harvey
- Oystering
Richard Howard
- September Tomatoes
Karina Borowicz
- Fanny
Carolyn Kizer
- From Blossoms
Li-Young Lee
- Blackberry-Picking
Seamus Heaney

Eating with Family

- Divorced Fathers and Pizza Crusts
Mark Halliday
- América
Richard Blanco
- Scrapple
Afaa Michael Weaver
- Honorary Jew
John Repp
- My dad & sardines
Toi Derricotte
- Food
Brenda Hillman
- Grandpa Vogt’s—1959
Ben Vogt
- Fish or like Fish
Joel Brouwer
- Family Reunion
Maxine Kumin
- Self-Portrait as So Much Potential
Chen Chen
- Persimmons
Li-Young Lee
- Frying Trout while Drunk
Lynn Emanuel
- Going Home: New Orleans
Sheryl St. Germain
- The Gospel of Barbecue
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
- Women Whose Lives are Food, Men Whose Lives are Money
Joyce Carol Oates
- When de Co'n Pone's Hot
Paul Laurence Dunbar
- Tablet
Atsuro Riley
- lessons
Jacqueline Woodson

Eating with Ghosts

- To the Executive Director of the Actual:
Bruce Smith
- The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Wallace Stevens
- original [sin]
Alison C. Rollins
- A Supermarket in California
Allen Ginsberg
- Butter
Andrea Cohen
- Stomackes
Albert Goldbarth
- In the Kitchen
Chen Jun
- They eat out
Margaret Atwood
- Eating Together
Li-Young Lee
- Days of 1994: Alexandrians
Marilyn Hacker
- Ghost Supper
David Wojahn
- enough food and a mom
Francine J. Harris
- In the Middle of Dinner
Chris Abani
- A Whole Foods in Hawai‘i
Craig Santos Perez

Hunger and Discipline

- I allow myself
Dorothea Grossman
- On A Diet
William Matthews
- Meditation on a Grapefruit
Craig Arnold
- Waiting for the Twelfth
Kaveh Akbar
- Parthenogenesis
Brenda Shaughnessy
- The Grind
Ange Mlinko

Comfort Food

- Contemplations at the Virgin de la Caridad Cafetería, Inc.
Richard Blanco
- Sitting Down to Breakfast Alone
Christian Wiman
- Corned Beef and Cabbage
George Bilgere
- Bronzed
Dean Young
- Onions
William Matthews
- Ode to the Midwest
Kevin Young
- Harold’s Chicken Shack #86
Nate Marshall

Food and Love

- Salad Days
Tomás Q. Morín
- Apples
Peter Heller
- Food of Love
Carolyn Kizer
- Swordfish
Andrew Hudgins
- Appetite
Rynn Williams
- Inside
Linda Hogan
- Peanut Butter
Eileen Myles
- Last Meal: Breakfast Tacos, San Antonio, Tejas
Laurie Ann Guerrero
- Oranges
Roisin Kelly
- The Love Cook
Ron Padgett
- Cleaning a Fish
Dave Smith
- Peach
Jennifer Tonge
- Love Train
Tomás Q. Morín
- November Philosophers
Katie Ford
- Your Invitation to a Modest Breakfast
Hannah Gamble
- Everything Good between Men and Women
C. D. Wright
- Pitahaya
Craig Arnold
- Captivity
Louise Erdrich

Eating for Sustenance and Survival

- The Invention of Cuisine
Carol Muske-Dukes
- cutting greens
Lucille Clifton
- Perhaps the World Ends Here
Joy Harjo
- Blood Soup
Mary Ruefle
- Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe
Bill Holm
- Boston Year
Elizabeth Alexander
- Oxtail Stew
David Dominguez
- Pear
Paisley Rekdal
- My Species
Jane Hirshfield
- 1977: Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer
June Jordan
- Canned Food Drive
Kathleen Lynch

Indulgence

- Wine
Pierre Martory
- Wild Peaches
Elinor Wylie
- This Is Just To Say
William Carlos Williams
- Eating the Pig
Donald Hall
- Because our waiters are hopeless romantics
Amy Beeder
- Ortolans
Rachel Galvin
- Abundance
Paul Violi
- The Wine
Michael Metivier
- Donut
Julian Stannard
- Poem
Maureen N. McLane
- Mama Said ...
Mary Moore Easter
- Appetite
Paulann Petersen
- Wasps' Nest
Michael Schmidt
- Pourriture Noble
Marie Ponsot
- The Prelude
Matthew Zapruder
- A Dish of Peaches in Russia
Wallace Stevens
- The Gulf, 1987
Deborah Paredez
- The Good Life
Tracy K. Smith
- All You Can't Eat
Molly McQuade
- Tomorrow
Bernadette Mayer
- We Eat Out Together
Bernadette Mayer
- What to Eat, What to Drink, and What to Leave for Poison
Camille T. Dungy
- Peaches
Peter Davison

For Kids

- Eating Words
Katherine Hauth
- To Catch a Fish
Eloise Greenfield
- Toasting Marshmallows
Kristine O'Connell George
- Twickham Tweer
Jack Prelutsky
- The Worm
Ralph Bergengren
- “A peanut sat on a railroad track ...”
Anonymous
- The Beak of the Pelican
J. Patrick Lewis
- My Lemonade Stand
Rebecca Kai Dotlich
- If Not for the Cat
Jack Prelutsky
- Cookie
David L. Harrison
- Little Miss Muffet
Mother Goose
- The Tummy Beast
Roald Dahl
- My Doggy Ate My Homework
Dave Crawley

PROSE

- Chasing Utopia
Nikki Giovanni
- A Few Leaves of Salted Rocket
Ange Mlinko
- Disorder and Early Sorrow
Michael Hofmann
- What’s for Dinner?
W. S. Di Piero
- Eating Lorca
Kristin Naca
- The Pits
- True Bones
John McIntyre
- The Sonnet as a Silver Marrow Spoon
Adam O'Riordan
- Wild Love
Kyla Marshell
- In Search of the Auden Martini
Rosie Schaap
- My Dinner with Dubie
Matthew Gavin Frank
- All the Greens Whose Names I Do Not Know
A.E. Stallings

AUDIO

- Is your sweetheart edible?
From Poetry Off the Shelf
- Surf and Turf Special
From Poetry Off the Shelf
- “Cover the Lettuce”
From Poetry Off the Shelf
- Pass the Mashed Potatoes
From Poetry Off the Shelf
- Romancing the Pork
From Poetry Off the Shelf
- How Can They Write and Believe?: A Discussion of Muriel Rukeyser's "Ballad of Orange and Grape"
From Poem Talk
- Kids Eat It Up
From Poetry Off the Shelf
- Why Apples Can Cause Riots: A Discussion of Linh Dinh’s “Eating Fried Chicken”
From Poem Talk
- In the Middle of Dinner
From Poetry Off the Shelf
- Eat the One You're With
From Poetry Off the Shelf