Still Hungry
- Publisher
- Signature Editions
- Initial publish date
- Mar 2015
- Category
- Canadian
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781927426647
- Publish Date
- Mar 2015
- List Price
- $14.95
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Description
Still Hungry, Alisa Gordaneer's new collection of poetry, is a sumptuous read. A gracious host, the poet serves her readers poems with delectable titles like "Artichoke," "Plum Jam," "Ganache," "Pollo Con Chili" and "Raspberry Pie," but this is no poetic cookbook. Divided into four sections according to the basic sensations of taste -- salty, sour, bitter and sweet -- these poems are elegant meditations on how food so often shapes the crucial moments in our lives -- moments of sexual intimacy, love, friendship, betrayal and rebirth. Still Hungry also addresses concerns about food production and distribution. In "Slaughterhouse" Gordaneer explores the treatment of the animals raised for meat. In "Market/Place (Detroit)," she writes about her journey to a desolate farmers' market in Detroit in the midst of a snowstorm.
About the author
Contributor Notes
Alisa Gordaneer is a poet, writer and editor who has taught at the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria, Camosun College and Royal Roads University. She has worked as a newspaper editor, communications consultant and freelance journalist, and writes a regular column for Victoria's Boulevard Magazine. A member of the League of Canadian Poets, she has won many awards for her poetry and nonfiction.
Excerpt: Still Hungry (by (author) Alisa Gordaneer)
BREAKFAST INCLUDED
Fluorescent overheads lean wicked against 6 a.m., Thursday, another day as August ages into what it’s owed, one more hot spell before the leaves turn. Sun a yolk in white fog, orange sulfur lamps still humming over the I-89 interchange and the Comfort Inn breakfast room where a too-young grandmother to four girls is letting mama have her shower in peace and quiet, and put that down young lady the baby swatting a plastic spoon into pink Froot-Looped milk. It’s all supposed to be a treat, even the cook-your-own waffles poured from plastic cups into the automatic iron, chirping messily. Like the cooler with plastic pots of peach yogurt, blank eyeballs of peeled eggs, factory farming even here where the fields roll rustic into avocado green and harvest gold. A state trooper with the uncanny profile of your absent lover drips three more creamers into Styrofoam. Later, he’ll pull you over, won’t remember how you stared blankly at the closed-captioned TV, tearful over Lebanon, how you stirred and stirred cup after cup until you just had to leave. How your shaking hands hovered over a brown Formica table where you misplaced a chip of eggshell, he couldn’t know how you ached after a night that was, after all, also only a fragment, the whole road between then and now too long to keep driving this fast. How you now know that even sweet time disintegrates, Coffee Mate into a dark cup, enlightenment without substance. How children leave crumbs behind, and you, weeping with a crumpled napkin, sweeping up.
STILL HUNGRY
As always in September I wake in sloping peach-yellow mornings and remember there have been too few peaches this summer
know that as many furred skins as have prickled my lips, as many slick crevices as have fallen beneath your teeth, there have never been enough.
The sun lowering like overripe fruit is only a reminder, and so is the moon grown pregnant and gold, and the baskets of pumpkins where once were peaches
just moments ago. As always in September— and yet the days lean into winter and far away I know I’ll wish for jam
but I spent the season lingering in your arms, feeding you peaches, sure (then) that winter would feel as warm.