The Butcher's Apron: New & Selected Poems Including Greed: Part 14 [Paperback]

Diane Wakoski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2000

Diane Wakoski's twenty-fifth book is also her second selected poems, complementing Emerald Ice by gathering her best work from 1988 to 2000.

"All the poems in this collection," she writes, "describe the ongoing process of discovering beauty and acquiring an aesthetic sensibility via food" seeing and savoring it, cooking and sharing it, reaching out to all creation and drawing it in, devouring it, lapping it up, literally becoming one with it. In the title poem, chosen by Adrienne Rich for inclusion in Best American Poetry, the poet recalls an early memory of delight in pure color "Red stains on a clean white bib. . . crimson blood on canvas." Blood and crisp cotton as ink and paper, bread and wine as flesh and blood, the meal as art and as sacrament this is the stuff of The Butcher's Apron, a feast for lovers of good food and good poetry, and for those who, "as some women love jewels, love the jewels of life."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wakoski's 25th book of poetry is also her second selected, complementing Emerald Ice: Selected Poems 1962-1987 by covering work written between 1988 and 2000. Wakoski, a California native who has lived in Michigan since the mid-'70s, uses the selections to lay thematic emphasis on, as her introduction notes, the "beauty or the lack thereof" found in preparing and eating food. Using a kind of plainly spoken, autobiographically grounded line, Wakoski allows her fascination with culinary imagery to lead her speaker through a reflective self-analysis in the face of the aging process: "Had I/ learned/ to draw/ rather than eat, I am sure/ that I would have found less anguish in my life." The book is divided into five sections, the last of which contains a new part of Wakoski's long poem "Greed," an examination of her self-described "obsession about purity": "At once she learned that saving something/ meant giving it up./ That is, if you saved your chocolate,/ you couldn't eat it." Wakoski is a dedicated independent, long refusing to align herself with any particular camp or aesthetic, and her work can tread close to an isolated process of self-mythologizing (the speaker often compares herself to Medea and Medusa). The work tends to be strongest when it is most self-consciously outspokenA"Silence is not a good opponent/ for injustice and unfair treatment./ It participates/ in a way I still can't allow myself." (Feb. 15) Forecast: Wakoski has been dutifully published by Black Sparrow for years, and it will take some high profile reviews to lift this book beyond her constituency. This may be the time for it, though, since this volume, despite the skew toward comestibles (food-centered collections take note), completes a two-volume selected.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

"Where do our roots start?/ In what we eat,/ or what we read?" asks Wakoski in a poem called "Letters with the Ring of Truth," part of her latest volume of poems. The California-born poet, whose prolific career began in a loose association with the Beat poets of the late 1950s and the Deep Imagists of the New York poetry scene, centers this volume largely on the harvesting, purchasing, preparation, and enjoyment of food. Some of the poems (like "Braised Short Ribs") can even be followed as recipes: "And a cup of dry/ red wine added and reduced by a third/ before adding the beef stock and/ the browned short ribs." There are poems of pumpkin pies that will not set, of flower petals used in salads, of ham sandwiches Wakoski ate as a child. Wakoski's feminine gentility pervades this volume, which can't be read all at once rather, it must be dipped into now and then, as if one were sticking a finger into a pot of honey. Highly recommended. Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Black Sparrow Press (October 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1574231448
• ISBN-13: 978-1574231441
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,649,940 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Sumptouos Collection, January 15, 2001

By 

Mark Begley "Letterpressed.com" (Fresno, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Butcher's Apron: New & Selected Poems Including Greed: Part 14 (Paperback)

Wakoski has been writing about food for years, but this is the first collection of her poetry specifically devoted to the subject. More than a "best of" this is a perfectly mounted love-poem to sustenance, and a furthering of Wakoski's own personal mythology combined. Along with reprinted, and new, poems about food, BUTCHER'S APRON also includes the long-awaited 14th installment of her epic poem "Greed." In it Ms. Wakoski explores the "Greed for Purity" through food, again, and provides the reader with a sadly rendered still-life portrait. This is a dynamic exploration thru verse.

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars yes, the books has its own weaknesses, February 5, 2004

By 

Keats (Rhode Island) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Butcher's Apron (Hardcover)

The idea of writing poetry in an information age has never been questionable as it is now. "The Butcher's Apron: New and Selected Poems" not only challenges the role of language but it also abhors the idea of originality--Even the "oppressive" Victorians would have regarded such an experiment as mediocre. The reference to quantum physics is another attempt to rebel against contemporary society; almost as if to elevate the poet's unique character and diminish every scholar's existence. Obscure language and archaic metaphors were "in" thirty years ago, but now, especially when it's "cool" to be "out," such literary devices are, in fact, "out"-dated. Sorry, but this project didn't make the cut if only because the poet's language is no longer authentic, much less inspiring.