Café Paradiso by Charles Simic
“My chicken soup thickened with pounded young almonds
My blend of winter greens.
Dearest tagliatelle with mushrooms, fennel, anchovies,
Tomatoes and vermouth sauce.
Beloved monkfish braised with onions, capers
And green olives.“
This poem retells a menu familiar to Simic, calling out to his favorite dishes through the classic style of clever wordplay and erotic wit that defines his style of poetry. As Simic hinted before he passed in a guest piece for Food and Wine magazine, Café Paradiso is a love letter to the flavors he had fallen in love with. Inspired by dishes from an Italian restaurant in Portsmouth called Anthony Alberto’s, what stood out most to me about Simic’s discussion of this particular work was his quote “Give me a bowl of spaghetti and I’ll write you a poem.” (Simic, 2000)
Even before he stakes his point by referring to tagliatelle pasta as “dearest” or monkfish as “beloved“, the possessiveness of the “my” that precedes both the chicken soup and the wintergreens is reminiscent of the way you may call someone “my darling” or “my love”.
“Give me your tongue tasting of white beans and garlic,”
This line seems to break the metaphor just a little, unless Simic is envisioning his plate to have a tongue of sorts and I am just failing to read between the lines. Despite the slight change in perspective, this line drives forward the intimacy of the piece, to taste someone’s tongue is to be incredibly intimate with them, and to have a favorite flavor speaks to the presence of food and flavor in the relationship, as well as heavy familiarity.
“Sexy little assortment of formaggi and frutta!
I want to drown with you in red wine like a pear,”
These lines are dripping with the all-encompassing, all-consuming passion that comes with deep love or intense sex, whilst also making the reader hungry, thirsty, and on their toes for the next line. The way Simic paints the scene of drowning in wine is so rich, so indulgent, and parallels the way love is desired as something that surrounds and consumes us.
“Then sleep in a macédoine of wild berries with cream.”
Berries, cream, and relaxation. Again with the richness and the indulgence, but also a key theme of this line is its place as dessert, both on the menu and in the poem. This line serves as a way to get across the the reader that there is a presence of sweetness in this menu, to tell you about the berries and cream that the consumer may enjoy. But the line also serves as the final course of the poem, the final drop of sweetness before the writing is over, the line itself serves as dessert for the reader so they may experience alongside Simic. You get to exist in the bliss of remembering lying in your lover’s arms, the indulgence of their relaxation, as he does the same, chewing his dessert.
Crazy About Her Shrimp by Charles Simic
I think this poem is a really great one to look at in tandem with Café Paradiso but I analyzed it last quarter so I’m just going to link that post so I can get more content into my last week.
Feast by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“I came upon no wine
So wonderful as thirst.”
The desire is written as more enjoyable than the satisfaction, is this because the author revels in fantasy, or because she is often let down by reality?
“I came upon no fruit
So wonderful as want.”
This poem speaks more to desire than sex, but makes an interesting distinction between desire and hunger. The desire speaks to the repetitive nature of the poem, the way the author so precisely defines her feelings through metaphor and kind intellectualism. Hunger runs throughout this poem, accompanied by cousin thirst, defined in the more literal aspects of the poem, the ability held by the author to consume all the world’s foods and yet still miss missing them.
“I will lie down lean
With my thirst and my hunger. ”
The Dinner Party – Art Installation by Judy Chicago (1979)
The Dinner Party was an art piece and exhibition by Judy Chicago, who started work on the piece in 1974 and displayed it for the first time in 1979. Known for her feminist statement pieces, this piece especially highlighted the consumable aspects of femininity and historical womanhood. Its early title, “25 Women Who Were Eaten Alive” signals the kind of edible sex messaging we can expect from a presentation such as this, bridging the gap between these two kinds of consumption.
The exhibition was made up of a triangular dinner table, with the triangle representing equality between each participant. The table was set with thirteen places on each side for a total of 39 places, each complete with an embroidered table runner with the guest’s name, a sculpted and painted plate, utensils, and a drinking glass. Symbolism both hidden and obvious are interwoven through this mixed-medium art piece that reflects upon women historical, fictional, and mythical.
Eleanor of Aquitaine
I chose to focus first on the place setting for Eleanor of Aquitaine because she was my favorite historical figure in middle school, having read A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver by E. L. Konigsburg. Eleanor lived a drama filled life, first becoming the Queen of France on the arm of her husband Louis VII, and later the Queen of England through her marriage to King Henry II. She spent 16 years in imprisonment at the hand of the King, when her son attempted to overthrow her husband, gaining her freedom only after King Henry II was dead. She then ruled the country in place of her son King Richard I, due to him being a minor, and was the mother of King John, who was famously hated so much they created the Magna Carta. So you can see why I thought she was pretty cool.
The symbol carved into her plate is a fleur-de-lis, common in French artwork from the middle ages. The middle tip of the fleur-de-lis has been split open to resemble a vulva, the feminine power and prowess of Queen Eleanor. The Brooklyn Museum, which houses the piece, says this about the runner and it’s symbolism.
“Eleanor of Aquitaine’s runner is modeled after tapestries made by noble women to hang as decoration in feudal castles or to use during ceremonial parades. The imagery is taken from the famous Unicorn Tapestries, circa 1495–1505, in which mystical unicorns appear within the corrals. The corral on the runner surrounds Eleanor’s plate. It symbolizes Eleanor’s imprisonment by her second husband, Henry II, and compares her power as queen with that of the mystical unicorn.”
Boadaceia
Boadaceia is another woman I chose due to familiarity, she is known as a heroine in British history and even has her both song on Horrible Histories, a popular kids TV show that was on the BBC teen network “CBBC” when I was living in the UK. The wife of a Celtic King, she was elected to lead a rebellion against Roman forces after they diregarded a treaty made between their leaders and her late husband to split the kingdom upon his passing. While Boadaceia was victories for a short while against the present Roman troops, when the full force of the Roman army showed up they could not match up to the equipment and the tides quickly turned in the favor of the invaders. While stories differ, the most commonly believed is that Boadaceia ingested poison that day so as to avoid capture, though other say illness, war wounds, or other non-self inflicted means of death. Either way, the Romans were never able to capture her, and she became a historical hero in Europe.
Boadaceias plate is painted with the smooth rocks of stone henge to represent the English islands she was from, and a golden helmet split into a vulva to represent her life as a warrior and a leader in both royalty and battle, both strong in her will and her feminine power.
Natalie Barney
Natalie Barney was born into a rich French family in the late 1800’s, a Lesbian and a non-monogamist she opened her home to artists, writers, and creatives of all kinds for over sixty years in pursuit of true freedom of expression for those outside the accepted bounds of society. When World War II engulfed Europe documents surfaced that cause controversy to surround her to this day. Barney was of Jewish decent and was openly a lesbian, yet her sister was able to forge a document of her Catholic confirmation to dissuade Nazi authorities. Despite the liberalness of her mainstream beliefs, unpublished memos show her sympathizing with fascists and holding some pro-nazi beliefs of her own. While it has never been determined if these were in fact her beliefs, or if these documents were created to further insure her safety due to the erotic and queer nature of her work, by the end of the war she is documented as siding with the allies. Still, it seems prudent to take into account her proximity to pro-facist behavior.
Her plate is painted and sculpted to be a lily, a popular symbolism of womanhood and femininity, both in historical and metaphorical contexts, with a lily often being the flora used to represent a vagina. I like this clever play on the main structure of the project, with the plate still portraying the same message whilst going outsides the bound soft what we have come to expect of these pieces. I also really love the note given about the place runner and the butterflies.
“The runner also mimics the Art Nouveau style and color palette of the plate. The multi-colored fabric, art-deco silk from the 1920s or 30s, resembles the wings of a butterfly. Sections of the butterfly form are outlined with black glass beads and overlaid with layers of sheer fabric, mimicking the plate’s iridescence and also suggesting the luxurious nature of Barney’s life. The butterfly motif is repeated throughout The Dinner Party to symbolize women’s struggle to be free to pursue their own dreams, and in this place setting “the butterfly form, its edges almost entirely free from the geometric constraints of the runner, suggest the freedom of expression that was offered by Barney’s salon and embodied in her life”