as some women love jewels, love the jewels of life
"All the poems in this collection," Diane Wakoski 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 "the jewels of life."