Food as Art

One cannot begin to discuss the events of humankind without including food, be it the bison of Tuc D'Audoubert, the apple in the Garden of Eden, the Last Supper, the fall of Rome, the French Revolution or the Russian revolution of 1917 (“Bread, Peace and Land” was the rallying cry). Without argument, food has been and will continue to be at the core of the human experience.

Tom Standage does an excellent job in detailing the role food has played in shaping world events in his well-written book, “An Edible History of Humanity.” He cleverly describes food as the “invisible fork” that has “prodded humanity and altered its destiny.” Standage explains:

“To the discerning eye, food’s historical influence can be seen all around us, and not just in the kitchen, at the dining table or in the supermarket. That food has been such an important ingredient in human affairs might seem strange, but it would be far more surprising if it had not: after all, everything that every person has ever done, throughout history, has literally been fuelled by food.”

Understandably then, food, prose and verse have been married since the first word was committed to parchment. Our exposure to food and the written word begin at an early age with childhood rhymes like Miss Muffet’s curds and whey; Jack Horner’s plum pie; Little Tom Tucker’s white bread and butter; Peter’s pumpkin; and Sam’s green eggs and ham.

In the hands of a skilled writer, food can play a pivotal role in propelling a story forward, like Scarlett O’Hara’s fiery oath: “... If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.” Food can also be used quietly to explore a character’s cultural background. Amy Tan, for example, used food in “The Joy Luck Club” as a symbol for a mother’s love of her daughter.

That same idea of food as love and family was repeated in the Taiwanese film, “Eat Drink Man Woman” (and its remake, “Tortilla Soup”). Other books and films carrying on with the theme include the deliciously filmed German movie “Mostly Martha;” “Big Night;” “Like Water for Chocolate;” and “Pieces of April.”

Food is sensual and sexy as in “Chocolat” (more so the film version than the novel); “Dandelion” (originally “Tampopo”); “Woman on Top;” “Waitress;” and “Tom Jones.”

Food is sinful: “Vatel;” “La Grande Bouffe;” “The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover;” and “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.”

Food is life-altering as “Babette's Feast,” “Julie and Julia;” “The Chinese Feast;” “Fish Fall in Love;” and “Ratatouille.”

And of course food can always be used as a shock factor, as in Günter Grass’ “The Tin Drum” when Oskar’s mother kills herself by gorging on fish and eels. Thomas Harris’ wickedly delightful Hannibal Lecter creates a howl with his recollection of a fine meal: “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

In a terrific column on the role of food and literature, scholar Jonathan C. David explains:

“Because food customs call forth such a labyrinth of associations on the part of individual writers, and because the inherent sensuality of food involves not only the senses of smell and taste, but also the other senses, food is capable of evoking an avalanche of memories and feelings. Food imagery may appear, therefore, in literature as a source of deeply embedded associations that lead into the depths of individual and cultural memory.”

I found another enlightening essay at enotes.com exploring the ancient interplay between food and poetry: “Food has been a topic of poetry for many centuries and in many cultures; the notion that food writing and poetry writing are totally separate ventures is a recent development. Much of our knowledge of eating habits, culinary practices, and food taboos throughout history and around the world comes from poetry. Food in poetry also functions as a powerful symbol of spiritual and moral states, and at other times it is used as a sexual symbol.”

The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) delves more deeply into the subject of food in art and life with a very insightful, educational, entertaining website, The Meaning of Food. A great resource site, The Meaning of Food “is an exploration of culture through food. What we consume, how we acquire it, who prepares it, who’s at the table, and who eats first is a form of communication that is rich with meaning.”

Included in that site PBS has a fun slideshow dedicated to food in literature, citing classics such as James Joyce’s “Ulysses;” Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote;” Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales;” and John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden.”

Whether writing poetry or for the page, stage or screen, don’t overlook the powerful role food plays in our daily lives. As novelist and playwright J.B. Priestly so perfectly summed up life:

“We plan, we toil, we suffer - in the hope of what? A camel-load of idol's eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs.”

If you don’t know how to cook, that’s okay. There’s no better time than the present to start experimenting and learning the “joy of cooking.” You’re life and your art will definitely benefit from it.

Here’s a great jumping off point where food and literature truly come together: “A Feast of Words: For Lovers of Food and Fiction” by Anna Shapiro. Shapiro has created inventive menus to accompany the pleasures of reading Proust, Dickens, Melville, and Charlotte Bronte. Over 50 recipes for such delights as Quail with Potaoes and Grapes ("Babette's Feast"); Lamb a la Robin (“David Copperfield”), and Meat Tart (“Ethan Frome”) accompany essays which expound upon the importance of food in such masterpieces as Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, and Jane Eyre.

Here’s to good cheer, good company and good food and great art!

Other resources:

Food in the arts

The Long History of Food in Art

Food and Eating in the Movies:

Better Food Writing: Adjectives

The Function of Food in Mediaeval German Literature

"Burying the Dead" - A poem by Donald G. Redman

“Burying the Dead”
By Donald G. Redman

You should decide what to keep and what to leave for dead
Before you pack all your crap in boxes and seal them up like coffins.
But I hadn’t done that; I’d crammed all my possessions haphazardly
Like an evacuee fleeing a hurricane.

I settled into a bombed-out apartment, my precious junk
Still in boxes strewn about like caskets after a flood.
A naked bulb dangled above,
Casting an ugly white light on the carnage below.

The windows were stripped bare so the whole world could see in.
The wooden floors needed to be refinished and
I thought maybe I’d do that before the furniture arrived,
But who was I kidding.

It was cold outside, gray, and getting dark.
A good day for a funeral.
But first I had to pry open those damned boxes like a grave robber and
Loot the valuables before I could dispose of the corpses.

A small box branded “Important!” laid disemboweled on the floor.
It had held the corkscrew I was now using to open
The first of several cheap bottles of red wine
I intended to spill that night.

But what good is it to mark where the corkscrew is buried
When you forget to label the crate with the wineglasses?
Screw it.
I’m not above drinking from the bottle.

I’d seen the winos on Camp Street do that –
Drink straight from bottles shrouded in brown paper bags.
That was back before the Warehouse District got so gentrified.
Before the World’s Fair came.

Every Friday as I left work I’d see them milling about Camp Street
With upturned grins and upturned bottles.
Come Monday I’d find them passed out in doorways or hobbling,
Battered, bruised and bandaged.

I shoveled through the box with the corkscrew
And dug up a portable clock radio and plugged it in.
Townes Van Zandt was singing “Nothin.’”
I walked to the window to peer out, but only saw my reflection.

I was well into my wine when
I unearthed a squat, metal penny bank.
It was from my youth, a safe to store my valuables
Though I apparently never considered money valuable.

My parents had been purging their house of artifacts
From our childhood, returning shit to their rightful owners.
The safe was mine and so I had the burden of carrying it
Around like a cremation urn.

The door was sealed shut by a tiny combination lock.
I turned the bank upside down and discovered I had been trusting in my youth,
Or I had been forgetful.
Printed in black permanent ink: 24-14-3.

I opened the vault and withdrew a plastic bag
Stuffed with envelopes in lavender.
I knew instantly what they were:
Love letters from a romance I had long left for dead.

After our relationship had returned to dust
I apparently had been unable to destroy the letters
And instead entombed them inside a toy bank.
That’s why you don’t let the living bury the dead.

It must have been out of morbid curiosity
That I opened the bag.
Almost immediately my nostrils were filled with
The intoxicating scent of perfume.

Like a lover preparing his beloved’s funeral attire,
My old self had arranged the letters neatly, orderly,
And placed them within the crypt in chronological order,
Embalmed in her perfume.

Nina Simone was casting a spell on me from the radio.
Perfume filled the air like hoodoo incense
And my old girlfriend was suddenly standing there,
A ghost in the corner of my room.

Maybe I was thinking I could resurrect the dead;
I slowly removed the envelopes from the body bag
And began reading the letters one by one,
Starting with the first letter I had ever received from her.

Of course she had promised me her undying love
And hearing her whisper those words once more
Made me want to believe all over again.
But they were after all just empty promises ushered from the grave.

And then came the letters from the bottom of the pile.
Based on her stilted responses, I must have been writing in anger.
I had been angry – she was throwing dirt on my grave and I was scared
Like someone being buried alive trying to claw his way out of the coffin.

Re-reading the letters lead me on a long emotional march
From a joyful Mardi Gras parade to a somber funeral procession
And she was there with me every step of the way,
Waving her perfume-soaked letters like a handkerchief in a Second Line.

When I was finished I was as broken and battered
As a Camp Street wino on Monday morning.
I piled off the bottle and opened the window
And fanned her perfume out into the cold dark air.

I killed her again later that night.
This time by fire,
Burning the letters in a funeral pyre.
Ashes returning to ashes.

I’ve gotten better at burying the dead these days.
I’ve buried a few more relationships since then.
A marriage.
My parents.

The hard part is letting the dead stay dead.
For if you don’t,
They will surely rise from the grave
And eat your heart out.



Copyright 2010 Donald G. Redman All Rights Reserved

Texas Poet Twists Newsprint Into Poetry

Austin Kleon is a Texas-based poet, writer, cartoonist and designer. He's found a creative way of making poetry from the newspaper. His first book, Newspaper Blackout, was published this summer.
Now this is a fantastic idea!
Video link follows:
Texas Poet Twists Newsprint Into Prose : NewsHour Poetry Series : Video : The Poetry Foundation

The genesis of a poem: Driving and Crying

Last night I had what I call a “thinking dream” – I’m neither fully awake nor fully asleep. I’m vaguely aware that I’m dreaming and can manipulate some of the images I see internally while adding commentary. I have these “thinking dreams” quite frequently.

I'm jotting down here the images and emotions I had in last night’s dream with the intention of giving shape and meaning to the vision in the form of a poem.

Driving at night on a winding, curvy blacktop road with tall trees shooting upward from either side of the road (Natchez Trace perhaps). Bright headlights, bright solid white line demarking the edge of the road and reflective yellow dotted lines down the center. A pickup truck. Ice chest of beer in the bed. A can of beer wedged between my thighs. Hot beer tossed can – the sound of a full beer can hitting the pavement – a thud? Reflection of dash instruments cast in side window. A ghost thumbing a ride. My ex. A deer – a fawn – leaping in front of me. A crash. Busted windshield. Full moon. Drag body to the side of the road. Look back, in the distance, standing in the middle of the road, the ghost of my ex. Music. “Driving and Crying”? Jimmy Buffet? Running scared.

And now the creative process begins...

"The Donkey Tale" -- a short story

The Donkey Tale
by Donald G. Redman

It was one of those magical mornings we’re all blessed with at one time or another. My brother and I stumbled out of the house bleary-eyed and trundled off toward the school bus stop when Tommy McCurdy yelled from across the street: “Hey, there’s a donkey in my backyard!”

“Pshaw!” I said (pronouncing the “P”).

“Honest,” he said. “A real live donkey just walked up in my yard. He’s in the backyard right now. My mom’s gonna feed him some carrots.”

My brother and I dashed across the street without checking for traffic and met up with about twelve other kids who had heard the news. We all crammed in his backyard and sure enough, there was a danged donkey. I knew then that my mom and the Reverend Patterson were right – Jesus does love all the little children.

Tommy’s mom, Mrs. McCurdy, was all worried and was yelling at us to be orderly and stuff.

Mrs. McCurdy was always yelling. Tommy’s little sister, Kaye, was my age and sometimes she’d hang out with me in our playhouse in the backyard. Somehow Mrs. McCurdy got it in her head that I was Kaye’s keeper and that I knew where she was every minute of the day. As soon as she would see me step outside of the house she’d yell from across the street, “If you see Kaye…” Every time she’d yell that, I would immediately cringe, thinking she was spelling out a really bad curse word, until she added “…tell her to come home.”

Then there was the time that me and Tommy threw a dart in the air and it came straight down on Mrs. McCurdy’s cat. Boy did she ever scream. You should have heard the cat scream, too. I didn’t actually throw the dart but I was with Tommy when he did it. Oh, and he got the dart from me in an even swap for a 45 record of “Happy Together” by The Turtles. But that’s a different story for later.

So it was not a surprise that on this day Tommy’s mom was yelling. She yelled at us not to gather around the backside of the donkey or we could get kicked in the head so hard it’d make our brains fall out or worse.

Tommy and a couple of other lucky kids, including my brother who had muscled his way through the crowd, were at the front of the donkey, petting its forehead and feeding it carrots. I was among the smaller kids forced to stand a few feet back from the donkey and wait our turn to pet it. But I couldn’t wait. I broke free of the line and reached out to touch the donkey’s mane. The donkey turned his head to look at me and for a brief minute I was lost in his eyes – eyes so big and watery you think you could swim in them. And then the danged thing bit me. Hard! On the stomach!

I yelled out in pain and pulled up the front of my shirt and saw teeth marks on my stomach. Bloody teeth marks! Boy, I was really bawling then. But even though I was crying and yelling real loud, I could still hear Tommy’s mom screaming even louder: “Sweet Jesus!”

Mrs. McCurdy ordered everybody to get off her property or else she was going to call the cops. She told me I might want to have my mom check out my wound, adding “I doubt you have to worry about rabies. That’s just a donkey for you – they’re either kicking or biting or braying.” (I thought she had said praying, and I thought that was just about the craziest thing I had ever heard – kicking and biting and praying – ‘til I remembered Tommy’s family was Pentecostal.)

My dumb brother took great delight in my misery and thought there was probably nothing funnier in the whole wide world than me being bitten by a donkey. I couldn’t find any humor in it, but I did experience a small amount of glee when my mom said I could miss school while he had to go learn something that day.

We never did find out where that donkey came from or where it went. Before the cops got to Tommy’s house, the danged thing just wandered off never to be seen again. The only sign we had that the donkey ever existed was the teeth marks it left on my stomach.

For days after the episode, I was the star attraction on my block. Everybody wanted to see the teeth marks the donkey left behind. My brother said he’d be glad to be my manager and that we should start charging kids a dime for a peek, but I didn’t feel right about that. It didn’t bother him: he turned a nifty profit by setting up a Kool-Aid stand in the front yard with a handwritten sign reading: “Buy 1 drink/see wild ass bite mark free.”

A couple of weeks passed and the bite mark faded away. My brother’s Kool-Aid stand went out of business and I returned to just being another kid in the neighborhood. The block soon returned to normal, the quiet only intermittently broken by Mrs. McCurdy’s lament: “If you see Kaye…tell her to come home.”


Copyright 2010 Donald G. Redman All Rights Reserved

Fiction in a Flash

I found an interesting site at Writing-World.com and thought it may be of interest to other aspiring writers. This particular article I’ve highlighted attempts to answer the question how long your story should be. Of late I have been keenly interested in attempting “flash fiction,” which allows for no more than 1,000 words, although 750 words is the preferred length. Growing in popularity is “micro-fiction” with a maximum word count of about 100, which sounds to me like the haiku of prose.

Katharine Brush

My very first exposure to what we today call flash fiction was the brilliant short story “The Birthday Party,” by Katharine Brush. The term “flash fiction” wasn’t in vogue then (it was written in 1946) and until the moment I was introduced to it I had never before read such a short, short story. But wow! What a powerful story it is; packed with such big emotions in so few words (314 in total). It still haunts me. Read it here.

I was again acquainted with sudden fiction in the early 1990s with a wicked collection of absurd stories in, “Wearing Dad’s Head,” by Barry Yourgrau. His book has been re-released through Amazon.com where you can find it and other works by Yourgrau, including his break-out book “A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane” and the outstanding “Sadness of Sex.”

There are scores of sites on the Web featuring examples of flash fiction, but I direct your attention to a couple of sites I thought worthy: FlashFictionOnline.com and the blog site FlashFiction.net.

The Noblest Form of Communication

The Handwritten Letter: The Noblest Form of Communication
by Donald G. Redman

I caught myself browsing ink pens while at an office supply store where I was supposed to be shopping for my daughter’s back-to-school supplies, but somewhere between packages of ruled paper and pocket folders, I’d wandered to the glass display of ink pens. These weren’t your standard pens, like for doing homework or balancing the checkbook or scribbling notes. No, these were Montblanc, OMAS, S.T. Dupont, Lamy and other notable, high-class writing instruments.

I’ve had a few quality ink pens in my life, the last one purchased nearly fifteen years ago. That’s a long time for someone who had once fancied himself a connoisseur of ink pens and who had hopes of establishing a collection of high-class writing instruments.

I hadn’t made a cognitive decision to quit amassing quality ink pens; however, I think that it has been about fifteen years since I last wrote a letter by hand. I once heard someone describe the handwritten letter as “the noblest form of communication.” I know it’s true; when it came to writing letters by hand I almost always used high-class writing instruments. It seemed that I wrote with more flair and panache when I unsheathed my Montblanc. Or so I imagined.

But with the arrival of the ubiquitous computer and printer, it wasn’t long before I started leaning heavily on the machinery to keep up with my correspondence. Occasionally, I would unsheathe a writing instrument, but usually only to sign my name at the bottom of a typed letter – with great flair and panache, mind you. And sometimes I employed the pens for inscribing Christmas cards and whatnot, but the opportunities and occasions to use the pens faded with each passing year.

The handwritten letters gave way to typed letters, which gave way to email letters, and even that has given way to text messages and Facebook status updates.

Browsing that day at the quality ink pens, I realized that it really wasn’t the pens I missed, rather it was the letters. I miss letters. Good letters. The sort of letter that’s three to five pages long, written front and back – by hand! I think I knew a lot more about my friends back when we shared letters. Today I know instantly that they’re going shopping or what they just saw while on vacation, but I know little more than that. When we used to exchange letters we shared all that day-to-day stuff, too – where we had been, what we had done – but always included somewhere in those pages was a deeper look into that person’s soul.

I recently read a book about John Adams and it contained voluminous excerpts of letters from John Adams to his wife Abigail, his kids, Thomas Jefferson, and their letters to him. They contained life’s banalities like what crops to plant, budgetary concerns, and petty gossip, but they nevertheless wrote with such magnificent style that even everyday tasks sounded majestic. I marveled at the sheer beauty of their words, their style and the depth of meaning – so open and honest and tender. Truly it was the pinnacle of letter writing!

I never penned anything so majestic, but that’s okay. My parents certainly thought highly of every letter I ever wrote them. My earliest letters were to my father, who traveled often and was always on the road, sometimes weeks on end. My mom made sure we all wrote letters to him to keep him up-to-date on what was going on in our lives and to tell him we loved him and missed him.

I wasn’t too good about doing that, but I fancied myself a pretty good storyteller, so my letters were always little stories. Sometimes they were lighthearted like the time I blended Curious George with Robinson Crusoe, and other times I wrote dark, brooding stories that I’m sure alarmed my parents, like the story about the serial killer strangling telephone operators.

I am able to recall these childhood letters because my dad held on to them. He and mom held on to just about every letter any of us ever wrote them. A lot of the letters were just plain, run-of-the mill “how-you-doing” kind of letter hardly worth keeping. Some were more personal in nature, explaining a failed relationship or asking for financial help or expressing confusion and loss. I don’t know why they held on to any of these letters, but maybe it was because they were always signed with love.

My parents had done everything by mail – fell in love, maintained a long-distance love-affair, proposed to each other, exchanged engagement rings.... They wrote letters to each other almost their entire lives and to distant relatives certainly their whole lives. After my parents died I took a couple of letters they had written to each other, just to hold on to a piece of them. There is a quiet comfort in seeing a loved one’s handwriting.

They say you can tell a lot about a person by his or her handwriting. In fact, here’s a whole science dedicated to it – graphology. I remember a parlor game we had that supposedly let you analyze your family and friends by studying their handwriting. I wonder if in the near future there will be any need for handwriting experts. No one writes today. Well, at least not by hand. And “penmanship” in the classroom has given way to “keyboarding.” Cursive writing is no longer being taught in most schools across the country.
Instead of the barely legible chicken scratch or the flamboyant loops and curls or meticulous Copperplate script, we receive digital typeset devoid of character.

I remember with great fondness a letter-writing campaign I had embarked on during the summer of 1976. I was a teenager working as a Boy Scout summer camp counselor and during a weekend furlough I met a girl at a dance and we struck up a correspondence that lasted all summer and longer. I remember with clarity the circumstances surrounding the first letter I wrote her: It was at nightfall and I was seated at a picnic table outside my tent, accompanied by a friend, who was also writing a letter to his girl. A Coleman kerosene lantern burned brightly between us, attracting all sorts of insects. My friend and I sat in silence, writing our letters while June bugs crashed like Kamikazes into the lantern’s glass pane.

I was writing to a girl for the first time to express my feelings for her. My friend was writing a letter to his girlfriend to call it quits. When we were done writing, we looked up at each other and shared a laugh: “I say hello, and you say good-bye.”

I received scores of letters from my girl all summer long, re-reading each one a thousand times. She even sprayed perfume on the letters, driving me even crazier. I have zero recollection of what we talked about in those letters, but I completely remember how I felt waiting for them to arrive, smelling them, and lying on my camp cot reading them again and again and again.

You can’t get a scented email or text message or Facebook status update!

Ink flows like honey,
Loops and curves promising love.
Dreams sealed with a kiss.

I’m a dinosaur. I have never been one to stay on the phone for long and I get antsy when the conversation lasts longer than ten minutes. Sure, it’s nice to hear the voice of a loved one or a friend, but once you hang up and the conversation is over, it’s gone. That’s the same with digital messages. I’m very tactile and need to feel something in my hands for it to be real. To be able to hold a letter. Feel it. Smell it. Fold it and unfold it and read it again and again.

Okay, I admit I do like the immediacy of today’s communication, but there is something to be said for the pain that anticipation inflicts upon you while waiting for a letter to arrive. There is oh so much truth to the description “snail mail.” Once you composed a letter and the mailman picked it up, it was a waiting game. The days would be agonizingly long while you waited for a response. You calculated in your head that if the person received your letter on Monday and responded that very day, she still couldn’t get it mailed until Tuesday, meaning that the earliest you could expect a letter in your mailbox would be Thursday. Hardly anyone ever wrote back that fast. It usually took five to seven days to hear back. Still, you checked the mailbox daily in anticipation of a response letter.

When it did arrive... O the joy! It didn’t matter if it was from your girlfriend or your grandma, getting a letter of any sort was always a cause for joy.

The other day, my wife and I returned home from an errand and as we headed toward the house she asked, “Did you check the mail?” My immediate response was, “Why?” She turned around and walked back to the mailbox while I proceeded inward. There’s no reason to check the mailbox any more; all my bills are sent electronically, the majority of party invitations are emailed, and I haven’t received a “real” letter in about twenty years. Nope, the mailbox might as well be a tombstone planted in my front yard.

I think the last handwritten letter I ever sent was to the woman who eventually became my wife. Sure, I still write notes to her inside cards on her birthday and Valentine’s Day and on our anniversary, and I guess that still counts, sorta. But I think she used to know more about me when we exchanged letters than we do day, lying next to each other in the same bed.

I think I’m going to get that Pelikan ink pen I’ve been eyeing, purchase some nice stationery and start composing a handwritten letter – first to my wife and then we’ll see from there... I have an aunt I haven’t written to in a long, long time... a couple of friends who don’t do Facebook... some cousins in distant lands....

Coppyright 2010 Donald G. Redman All Rights Reserved