Why do certain artists inspire a poet?

Intimacy? To see & remember in a distant blue, longing?



Travel defines distance. When available at the farmers market, I buy squash blossoms. Remember, the black-clad Italian women (younger than I am now), preparing mounds of them. I title a poem. Later, buy three frocks because of the label – Fiori di Zucca. One should wear one’s poems. In public.

How are peaches unlike poems?

Let me set the stage: I was in TJ’s carrying a box of peaches. A woman (let’s call her Margaret) asks if I had bought peaches recently. “No.” She said she was skeptical if they would be good at the end of the season. “Guess I’ll find out.”

Unless you’re in an orchard, you buy fruit without tasting. You select by eye, hand, nose, and prayer. In a bookstore you can sample a poem or two before purchasing that exact book. Folks, that’s how peaches & poems differ.

If anyone runs into Margaret, please fill her in.



How does one prepare late-season peaches? The same as you would full-ripe-on seasonal ones. Perhaps, a tad less drippy-juicy, but delicious.

In exceedingly hot weather does the poem shrink or expand?

The desert heats up; we slow down. Does the poem move into the minimal as a property of shade? Or, expand as languid & reflection?



About food, Ed’s salad is famous (infamous?) and magical as only the necessary is. The ingredients are slant rhymes perfect to the birthday celebration, the wheat-hued walls, the full moon’s signature which the pool captures. Happy Birthday, Larry. Thank you, Master chef, Ed.

What poem does the graphical abstraction of a question inspire?

All marks on the page. What marks a sliver of silence?




Consider tomatoes (in the flesh) and basil (in the abstraction). Drizzle a sliced tomato perfect in ripeness with basil olive oil. What you don’t see, gives you pause to consider it by its absence. A kind of silence, wouldn’t you say.

How does a poem resonate with a listener?

Or is the question, why does a particular poem resonate with one listener and not the one beside her? Is the anatomy of the ear, universal? Is it a matter of physics -- sound/energy? Is it subject matter? Does this question matter?



Much the same can be said of food. Anatomy, physics, taste & the tasting. All matter.

How does the writing surface influence a poem?

The mechanics of creating. Do most poets favor screen or paper? One exclusively? If you used a different pen, how would the poem’s outcome differ?



Prepare a favorite food using the exact ingredients, proportions, and technique as usual. Say, soft boiled eggs. Cook in someone else’s kitchen. Is the taste the same?

What are the 500 favorite words of a poet?

See Dan Waber’s 500 Favourite Word project. See you in the Word Cloud.

http://chapbookpublisher.com/500-shop.html



Which of your favorite foods are also your favorite words?

How are sound, color and scent accomplished in a poem?

Words are sound awaiting activation. Timbre is color. What is the measure of scent? Is it seasonal? Is it topical?




Scent and color are inherent in food. And sound? Equally represented in the preparing, cooking, and the eating.

How does editing mature a poem?

The poet is smitten with its newborn. Love lies down with perspective. Time, patience, and trial/error required to appreciate the developing work.



How frequently does the mature palette return to toasted cheese sandwich w/tomato? Peanut butter w/jam always fresh/immediate, never usurped by the baroque.

How is poetry like mullein?

What’s mullein, you ask? Rosette-forming summer blooming plants which set up dramatic spikes with five-petaled, circular flowers. With age, the spikes take their twists & turns. Dramatic and beguiling. A narrative plot of shape? Shape recognizes; the physicality of a poem informs meaning. Twists accumulate as the plant matures, as gravity has its will.

I often wonder the impact of gravity on a poem. Perhaps, a later consideration.



Now, consider the shape of food – its unexpected & appreciated twists & turns. Once this was dubbed “architectural food.” Food/word – all is in construction. & the surprise.

How does altitude affect a poem?

Is a poem written differently from a plane? Is the poem read differently. To be put to the test this afternoon. Which is to ask, how will the Santa Fe landscape (especially the sky) influence the poems to be written – there.


Of food – luscious the spices. Sweet the anticipation.

Do sunflowers in a poem reference Van Gogh?

Which is to ask whether iconography of metaphor is universally understood and, across a culture, agreed.

Certainly, one could make that argument. Although, Gustave Caillebotte, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe, Diego Rivera, Gustave Klimt, Evelyn DeMorgan, and Bobs (Barbara) Cogill Haworth, among others, would beg to differ. My favorite contender is Joan Mitchell.



Now, do we have the fortitude to take on the rubrics of iconography and metaphor in cuisine?

Why does a perfect poem taste like a perfect peach?

Perfection does this to the mouth. And to the ear.


Try this:

slice the perfect peach
slice an heirloom tomato
chop fresh mint
cube robust feta
toss a semi-handful pine nuts
add twist of pepper
basil olive oil

serve in the perfect pasta bowl…. and next time add sliced fresh fig

When is there too much labor in a poem?

Are epics by nature laborious? Perhaps, ballads. By contrast, poems under 50 words are breezy – a sorbet. Or, too precious in their stringency.


By the way, is there a school of crock pot poetry?

If a cat sees only shadow & motion, what does a poem see when it looks at the reader?

Some questions are questionable. The same with a poem. Mirror takes on mirror.



How does the tongue address such questions? Vietnamese food --myriad of side dishes, touches of chili and fire. Leaves to wrap up. Mint & basil, plenty. A perfect repast to consider conundrums.

How to celebrate the day after the book launch?

Read a new journal – Ambush.



Enjoy a celebratory dinner. Oysters, of course. Martinis to accommodate the poems: very dry very cold w/a twist NOT gluten free. Kiss the co-author.