Food Poems

I never read poetry. But the other night, I decided to look on the site of the Poetry Foundation for poems from the magazine Poetry. I found two enjoyable poems about food. I’ll tell  you about one of them now, and maybe about the other one another time.

I was amused by some of the stanzas in a very long poem titled “Grapes,” which was published in April of 1927. The author is Ellen Glines, who published a number of poems there between 1924 and 1930, and that’s all I know about her — one or two mentions in an internet search yield very little other information. Here are a few lines from the poem.

Strange, the things that folks will eat,

Costly, exotic, piquant, sweet:

Truffles, snails, and nectarines,

Cashews, palm-hearts, madelines;

Pies of squash, mince, custard, apple;

Haggis; Philadelphia scrapple;

Syrupy kumquats stewed in crocks;

Bonbons from a tinselled box-

Sugared violets, nougat, divinity,

Hand-dipped chocolates to infinity!

Ripe olives, blutwurst, marzipan,

Sweet potatoes out of a can;

Anchovies, reed-birds, Camembert,

Stuffed celery, alligator-pear,

Rainbow ices in fancy shapes!

Nobody seems to care for grapes.

As I said, these are only a few of the lines from the poem, in which the author expresses her regret that “grapes” she had grown are not wanted by anyone. I take these grapes to be a metaphor for her poetry, which was evidently not particularly popular. The poem ends by saying that some day she thinks there will be a demand, but by then, she won’t want to sell grapes any more. As always when I interpret a poem I doubt my own ability to read poetry. Maybe the poem means something entirely different. The author is so incredibly obscure that no one seems ever to have published any other opinion, though.

I looked at a few of the other poems that Ellen Grimes published in Poetry Magazine. They didn’t seem to share the humor and light touch of the list of world foods that I quoted. In fact, they seemed a bit melodramatic and heavy to me. Maybe that’s why she’s so thoroughly forgotten.

Saint Paul, Minnesota: Poetry on the Sidewalk

Sidewalk poem that I photographed in Saint Paul in October, 2012. (Photo © 2023)

As I thought about my own encounters with poetry, I remembered a great poetry place: St. Paul, Minnesota, where I visited family (who were there temporarily) in 2012. A very special contest has been held in St. Paul every year since 2008: the Sidewalk Poetry Contest. Every year the winners' poems are embossed in the sidewalk blocks as they are repaired by the city. By now, around 1200 poems have appeared on the sidewalks of St. Paul.

A St. Paul sidewalk poem, embossed in concrete. (source)

"The submissions featured from this year’s [2023] contest encompass the diversity of St. Paul,
with poems in English, Hmong, Somali and Dakota." (source)

Review © 2023 mae sander

Magazine cover and verse from the Poetry Foundation website.