Current Series

Sustenance for the Soul:
Food in Poetry

Kent County Public Library in Dover, DE

Do you find poetry in food? If so, you are sure to find nourishment for your soul with this series. Poets and other writers have long used food as a muse and a means of stirring memory, creating new imagery, and for description of emotion. From Shakespeare, who uses food and appetite as a way of characterization (Falstaff comes to mind); to Emily Dickinson who used eating as a means of description everyone would understand ("Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate"), food plays a large part in our literal and figurative survival.

This series takes contemporary poets' writings about food and eating and turns them into food for the soul. You will read about the poets, explore their takes on all things culinary, and then try your hand at creating your own nourishing poetry.

Sessions will include writing exercises.

Please join us on these Thursdays from 1 to 3pm!

Contemporary American Poetry, 8th edition, Editors Al Poulin and Michael Waters

September 17 - Poetic Descriptions of Food
In the Pea Patch - Maxine Kumin pg 278
Onions - William Matthews pg 330
Field Mushrooms - W.S. Merwin pg 342
The Traveling Onion - Naomi Shihab Nye pg 363
Fork - Charles Simic pg 441

October 1 - Food Stirs Memory
Tomatoes - Stephen Dobyns pg 110
Crab-Boil - Rita Dove pg 114
Maple Syrup - Donald Hall pg 183
Blackberries - Yusef Komunyakaa pg 265
Persimmons - Li-Young Lee pg 292
What Brings Us Out - Naomi Shihab Nye pg 361

October 15 - Eating Poetry
OssoBuco - Billy Collins pg 83
Blackberry Eating - Galway Kinnell pg 247
Requiem on I-89 - Maxine Kumin pg 275
Eating Alone - Li-Young Lee pg 294
Eating Together - Li-Young Lee pg 295
The Simple Truth - Philip Levine pg 307
Another Insane Devotion - Gerald Stern pg 525

Meetings are free and open to the public. Sign-up is requested. Books may be picked up at the site at least two weeks before each session; participants should read the books in advance of the sessions.

This program is made possible, in part, by the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting arts in Delaware; and by the Delaware Humanities Forum, a state agency of the National Endowment for the Humanities. For additional information on activities in Delaware, visit the Delaware Division of the Arts and the Delaware Humanities Forum online.