The Butcher's Apron: New & Selected Poems - Softcover

Wakoski, Diane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1574231448 ISBN 13: 9781574231441

Publisher: Black Sparrow Press, 2000

Synopsis

Diane Wakoski's twenty-fifth book is also her second selected poems, complementing Emerald Ice by gathering her best work from 1988 to 2000.

"All the poems in this collection," she writes, "describe the ongoing process of discovering beauty and acquiring an aesthetic sensibility via food" seeing and savoring it, cooking and sharing it, reaching out to all creation and drawing it in, devouring it, lapping it up, literally becoming one with it. In the title poem, chosen by Adrienne Rich for inclusion in Best American Poetry, the poet recalls an early memory of delight in pure color "Red stains on a clean white bib. . . crimson blood on canvas." Blood and crisp cotton as ink and paper, bread and wine as flesh and blood, the meal as art and as sacrament this is the stuff of The Butcher's Apron, a feast for lovers of good food and good poetry, and for those who, "as some women love jewels, love the jewels of life."

About this title

Review:

After Edward Hopper's Marbletop Table: A Sestina For Anne Waldman
Amaryllis On Thames
Apricot Poem
Braised Leeks & Framboise
Breakfast
Breakfast At George & Molly Wickes'
The Butcher's Apron
A Californian Fights Against The Old New England Traditions
Clint's Bottle Of 1977 Chateauneuf-du-pape
The Coffee Drinker (1)
Costa Rican Coffee
Creme Brulee
The Dangerous Hermit
The Dark Procession Reviewed
Diet Moons
Eating A Plum On The Terrace
Eating Flowers
Eating Grapes With The Algebraist
Eggs
The Fear Of Fat Children
For Clint In East Lansing While I Am Sitting On The Adriatic Coast
Gabriella's Influence On Our Vision Of Plato's Cave
George Washington's Autumn
Grain
Greed: 1. Gloves Of Fire: Alchemy
Greed: 10. Desert Carp
Greed: 11. Honoring The Discovery Of Zero
Greed: 12. Morning's Scarf Of Gold
Greed: 13. The Morning Of The Enchantress
Greed: 2. The Midas Chocolate
Greed: 3. Finger Ears
Greed: 4. Medea's Summer Eyes
Greed: 5. Goddess Gold
Greed: 6. Raven Or Serpent
Greed: 7. Nighthawk
Greed: 8. Polishing Light
Greed: 9. Meeting The Ice Queen
Greed: Refrain
Having Replaced Love With Food & Drink
The Helm's Bakery Man
Human History: Its Documents
Image Is Narrative
In San Francisco
The Lessons Of Smoked Fish, Bear Claws & American Barbecue
Letter With The Ring Of Truth
Light Poem For The Lion Painter Who Bakes Scones In Michigan
Love To My Electric Handmixer
Lunch With Miriam & Toby
Making A Sacher Torte
Mole At Chloe's
My Mother's Milkman
Nell's Birthday
Night Blooming Jasmine: The Myth Of Rebirth In Berkeley
The Night Rides Of My Neighbor, Lorca, That Prevent Sleep
Ode To A Lebanese Crock Of Olives
Opening The Sunrise
The Orange
Orchids At Oldsmobile
Orphee
Our Lady Of The Chanterelles
Pamela's Green Tomato Pie
Parkin
Peaches
Pears
Perfume: 1. Shalimar
Perfume: 2. Belle Du Jour
Perfume: 3. Autumn
Perfume: 4. Braised Short Ribs
The Pumpkin Pie, Or Reassurances Are Always False; Though We Love Them
Robert Waxes The Car
Robert's Spaghetti Sauce
Robert's Yellow Tomatoes
Roses & Grapes
Salad Flowers
Sally Plum
Saturday Night
Scalding The Pot
Sestina To The Common Glass Of Beer: I Do Not Drink Beer
A Short Fable Of Endurance And Pity
Sue's Diet
The Tango Lesson
Teacup Feet
Un Morceau En Forme De Poire
Using Heather's Wooden Spoon
Viennese Coffee
Violets
What Would Tennessee Williams Have Said
When Breakfast Is Brought By The Morning Star
When Canned Peaches Turn Into Maplelight
Whole Sum
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

From Publishers Weekly:

Wakoski's 25th book of poetry is also her second selected, complementing Emerald Ice: Selected Poems 1962-1987 by covering work written between 1988 and 2000. Wakoski, a California native who has lived in Michigan since the mid-'70s, uses the selections to lay thematic emphasis on, as her introduction notes, the "beauty or the lack thereof" found in preparing and eating food. Using a kind of plainly spoken, autobiographically grounded line, Wakoski allows her fascination with culinary imagery to lead her speaker through a reflective self-analysis in the face of the aging process: "Had I/ learned/ to draw/ rather than eat, I am sure/ that I would have found less anguish in my life." The book is divided into five sections, the last of which contains a new part of Wakoski's long poem "Greed," an examination of her self-described "obsession about purity": "At once she learned that saving something/ meant giving it up./ That is, if you saved your chocolate,/ you couldn't eat it." Wakoski is a dedicated independent, long refusing to align herself with any particular camp or aesthetic, and her work can tread close to an isolated process of self-mythologizing (the speaker often compares herself to Medea and Medusa). The work tends to be strongest when it is most self-consciously outspokenA"Silence is not a good opponent/ for injustice and unfair treatment./ It participates/ in a way I still can't allow myself." (Feb. 15) Forecast: Wakoski has been dutifully published by Black Sparrow for years, and it will take some high profile reviews to lift this book beyond her constituency. This may be the time for it, though, since this volume, despite the skew toward comestibles (food-centered collections take note), completes a two-volume selected.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1574231448
• ISBN 13: 9781574231441
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 250