The Poetics of Food

Author(s): Jessica Gigot

Source: Gastronomica , Summer 2019, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Summer 2019), pp. 60-64
Published by: University of California Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26854602

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 C R E A T I V E R E F L E C T I O N | Jessica Gigot

The Poetics of Food

Abstract: Sitting down at a table to a home-cooked, local meal gives where it comes from and why, the closer we will be to our food supply
me the same sensation as sitting down at my desk to write a new and the people and land that grew it. The poetics of food, rooted in
poem: a pause and then a surge of gratitude, followed by the slow di- both art and science, is an area of inquiry that should be considered
gestion of truth, honesty, and love. As our food system evolves, we in future food studies as well as novel forums and modes of expression
need to look at food as the poetry of our lives. A new food language, for capturing the farmer’s perspective.
a poetics of food, is needed to fully understand the shifts in value and
daily practices that are inherent to developing an enduring and inclu-
sive food system. As more people think daily about what they eat, Keywords: poetry, food, farming, first-generation farmer

T H E W I N D H A S T A K E N O F F again. This is one of the hazards of seed, tulips, leeks, and pickling cucumbers. This valley is the
living in the delta flats—streaks of insufferable wind. My old last vestige of intact, continuous farmland along the I-5 corridor
barn and the noble horse chestnut along the driveway have west of the Cascade Mountains.
withstood these gusts for over eighty years, but there is no telling After spending a decade as an agricultural researcher,
how the newer greenhouses and duck coops I constructed will studying soil health and plant diseases relevant to the valley’s
fare. I have spent many nights listening to sixty mile an hour main crops, I gave up on a nomadic, academic lifestyle. My
squalls penetrate the lath and plaster. Sometimes it all feels like heart wasn’t in it, despite the many years I had devoted to this
an experiment, my life and this farm. I am a first-generation career path. My academic ambitions were born out of my early
farmer trying to make a life and a living on this land. love of being outside and close to the land and, ultimately,
The neighbors on three sides are potato fields. From the I didn’t want to leave this valley. Instead, I decided to stay and
upstairs window where I sit and write, I can see the vacant dig into the fields and farming community I had studied from
potato rows from last fall’s harvest. Migratory trumpeter swans a distance. I unearthed my passion for reading and writing
waddle their way over and between ridges, recovering the last poetry. I made a conscious decision to write and teach and,
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morsels of tuber. This view offers an openness that is both nos- most importantly, to start a farm.
talgic and desolate, especially in the muddy heart of winter. Poets have been discussing food for a long time. It makes
On a clear day, I can see some of Washington’s gems, islands for good metaphor and imagery. You can’t forget Seamus
like Orcas and Lummi to the west and the luminous Mount Heaney’s short-lived blackberries, Robert Frost’s laborious ap-
Baker, an active volcano, to the east. The farm is 11.1 feet above ple picking, Elizabeth Bishop’s venerable fish, and Lucille
60
sea level. The river is 1.5 miles away, and as the old timers like Clifton’s transformative greens. The poet Joy Harjo (1994)
G A STR ON OM ICA

to say, it overflows like a teacup. writes, “Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while
As a child, I never imagined I would be living a life of food. we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.”
I raise dairy sheep and make artisan cheese and grow a wild mix These poems show us how to feel and describe and truly con-
of things from basil to calendula flowers, all on ten acres. Most nect with food, especially the story of it.
of the farms in this valley, including the dairies, are male-owned Perhaps this is how I found myself on a journey back to
and multigenerational and they operate on several hundred writing poetry and farming after many years as a scientist.
acres; a farm size considered small by national standards—think Poetry, I have found, is the best vessel for connecting with the
wheat in the Palouse or corn and soybeans in the Midwest—but meaning and emotion of food. It helps me internalize its value
it is all relative. Potatoes and berries are prominent in the fields, and validate the tremendous effort required to grow and gather
but over ninety types of crops grow well here including cabbage food outside of industrial models. Food blogger and author

GASTRONOMICA : THE JOURNAL OF CRITICAL FOOD STUDIES , VOL . 19, NUMBER 2, PP. 60–64, ISSN 1529-3262, ELECTRONIC ISSN 1533-8622. © 2019 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA . ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PLEASE DIRECT ALL REQUESTS FOR
PERMISSION TO PHOTOCOPY OR REPRODUCE ARTICLE CONTENT THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS’S REPRINTS AND PERMISSIONS WEB PAGE, HTTPS ://WWW. UCPRESS .EDU /JOURNALS/REPRINTS-PERMISSIONS. DOI: HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.1525/GFC.2019.19.2.60.

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 Elissa Altman (2013: xi) writes, “There is poetry in food, kind-
ness in the act of preparing it, and peace in sharing it.” The
complexity of our food system, which includes all the pro-
cesses and infrastructure involved in feeding a population, has
been well analyzed. The value of local, sustainable, and re-
generative food production systems, as it pertains to human
and environmental health, has been demonstrated scientifi-
cally. Now how do we integrate all this information and em-
body the change?
As a farmer and eater I believe a new food language and
mode of self-expression, a poetics of food, is needed to fully
understand the shifts in value and daily practices that are in-
herent to an enduring and inclusive food system. To experi-
ence the beauty and complications of food through the lens
of poetry creates an opportunity to deepen our individual and
communal sense of belonging. Poetry can be a device for ex-
ploring the pervasive questions of how to define “healthy” food
and why caring about our food and where it comes from
matters.
Many poets have been inspired by their own farming or gar-
dening experience. New England poet and farmer Maxine
Kumin, who passed away in 2014, says, “My best ruminations
take place in the barn while my hands (and back) are busy do-
ing something else” (Kumin 1994: 19). In her poem “Potatoes”
Linda Hogan writes, “In one day of digging the earth / there is
communion / of things we remember / and forget” (Young
2012: 111). Each day I am presented with new lessons and
observations—the comforting warmth of fresh sheep’s milk, the
rejuvenating aroma of a bundle of sage, the soft give of warm,
spring soil. For me, poetry is the most cohesive and effective way
to process and share these lessons and relationships.
In his well-read essay “The Pleasures of Eating” farmer-
poet Wendell Berry (2002: 321) states that “eating is an agri-
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cultural act.” Romantic notions of farms appear daily—the
majestically grazing sheep, glimmering carrots, and the stoic
(male) farmer strolling in from the field at sunset. While this
may capture the reader or customer through nostalgia, it can
62 also confuse our perceptions of who is doing the work and
the actual sacrifice and physical exertion needed to maintain
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a farm, let alone make a living off of the land. The poetics of
food begs for honesty and truth.
After seven years on this land, I have buried my idealistic
notions of farming. It is constant, hard work. It is freedom
and joy and debt and sleepless, back-aching risk. I confront
life and death daily. As Berry (1998: 137) writes in one of his
Sabbath poems:
Near winter’s end, your flock
Will bear their lambs, and you
Must be alert, out late
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And early at the barn,
To guard against the grief
You cannot help but feel
When any young thing made
For life falters at birth
And dies.
The scale of food production, and more importantly, the
labor force behind it all is astounding. Exposure of the sacri-
fices and trials, the many invisible hands, involved in farm-
work and food processing is essential to moving forward. In
his poem “One Today” Richard Blanco reminds us of
“hands / as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane / so my
brother and I could have books and shoes.” Poetry can offer
hope in uncertainty and be a way for eaters to empathize with
the emotional experience of the farmer too, something that of-
ten gets glossed over in marketing and social media.
I have chosen this life of farming and it is the poem I want
to write. I endure another windstorm and hope it doesn’t rat-
tle the roof away or uproot one of the new fruit trees I pains-
takingly planted and tended to in order to ensure its survival.
Compared to the multigenerational farms around me, this
farm is an infant, an embryo. There are good days and bad
days. I have enjoyed spring mornings enraptured by the verve
of tillage and also persevered through hot, dry, forest-fire-
smoke summer days when I scramble to keep everything
alive. Nothing in nature is static, but I am grateful for the
deep connections, the intimacy with food, this work provides.
Poetry, like food, is for everybody. The poet Mary Oliver
says, “When you write a poem, you write it for anybody and
everybody” (Franklin 2017: 73). I followed a trail from suburb
to farm, biology to poetry, to find that the earth needs more
companions, especially those who are attentive and willing
to stay and do the work. Food and farming are a distinct mar-
riage of science and art. Sitting down at a table to a home-
cooked, local meal gives me the same sensation as sitting
down at my desk to write a new poem: a pause and then a
surge of gratitude, followed by the slow digestion of truth,
honesty, and love. A new food narrative is needed that can
sustain the daily realities of the eater and the farmer and
improve communication between the two. We need poems
that can cut through the propaganda and cultivate food liter-
acy. Poems that examine the meaning of nourishment.
My farm is one of thousands trying to reinvent and re-
imagine our food system, while redefining the parameters
of our relationship to land. These ventures paint a new pasto-
ral that is idealistic and gritty, solid and grossly unfinished.
The poetics of food sits at the intersection of place and taste
and self-sufficiency, and it is where we need to grow into the
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FIGU R E 3: PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHÈLE M . WAITE © 2019

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SUMMER 2019

FIGU R E 4: PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHÈLE M . WAITE © 2019

years ahead. The poet Tony Hoagland (2018: 29) writes, ———. 2002. “The Pleasures of Eating” In The Art of Commonplace.
64 Berkeley: Counterpoint.
“Poets must continue to live close to the wound, and poems
Blanco, Richard. 2013. “One Today.” www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/
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to speak from the edge of what the culture at large is unwill-
ing to know.” I am here, farming and writing, because I know
our food system is broken. Because I believe a new food fu-
ture, defined by equality and ecological balance, is possible.
Bite by beautiful bite, line by illuminating line.
REFERENCES
Altman, Elissa. 2013. Poor Man’s Feast. New York: Berkley Books.
Berry, Wendell. 1998. A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems
1979–1997. Berkeley: Counterpoint.
one-today
Franklin, Ruth. 2017. “The Art of Paying Attention.” New Yorker,
November 27.
Harjo, Joy. 1994. “Perhaps the World End Here.” www.
poetryfoundation.org/poems/49622/perhaps-the-world-ends-
here
Hoagland, Tony. 2018. “The Poet as Wounded Citizen.” The Writer’s
Chronicles 51, no. 3.
Hogan, Linda. 2012. “Potatoes.” In The Hungry Ear: Poems of
Food and Drink, edited by Kevin Young. New York:
Bloomsbury.
Kumin, Maxine. 1996. Women, Animals, & Vegetables. Princeton,
NJ: Ontario Review Press.

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