Author(s): Peter Washington (Editor)

Gift

Eating and drinking and the rituals that go with them are at least as important as loving in most peopleâe(tm)s lives, yet for every hundred anthologies of poems about love, hardly one is devoted to the pleasures of the table. Poems of Food and Drink abundantly fills the gap. All kinds of foods and beverages are laid out in these pages, along with picnics and banquets, intimate suppers and quiet dinners, noisy parties and public celebrations âe" in poems by Horace, Catullus, Hafiz, Rumi, Rilke, Moore, Nabokov, Updike, Mandelstam, Stevens, and many others. From Sylvia Plathâe(tm)s ecstatic vision of juice-laden berries in âe~Blackberryingâe(tm) to D. H. Lawrenceâe(tm)s lush celebration of âe~Figsâe(tm), from the civilized comfort of Noël Cowardâe(tm)s âe~Something on a Trayâe(tm) to the salacious provocation of Swiftâe(tm)s âe~Oystersâe(tm), from Li Po on âe~Drinking Aloneâe(tm) to Baudelaire on âe~The Soul of the Wineâe(tm), and from Emily Dickinsonâe(tm)s âe~Forbidden Fruitâe(tm) to Elizabeth Bishopâe(tm)s âe~A Miracle for Breakfastâe(tm), Poems of Food and Drink serves up a tantalizing and variegated literary feast.