Nourishment: Poems about Cooking and Kitchens

My home has an open floor plan. The space where I read poetry is also the space with shelves full of cookbooks, the space where I chop onions, knead bread, simmer soup, and do a lot of canning. The kitchen sits at the front of the house, letting me look out at neighbors and trees and our windspinners when I stand at the sink. It's at the heart of the house, really.

The daily labor of preparing food to nurture our bodies and attention to the space where we do this work both show up in this selection of poems.

Why so few about making soup? Because I already made a potful of poems about soup.

Purely for fun, this onion font found courtesy of the Eat Voraciously column by G. Daniela Galarzo in the Washington Post, and Eat this Poem,* a book that poses a dilemma: shelve with poetry or with cookbooks?

"Good Room"
William Stafford

Room that gives life, alone with independent
spices content just to be in their jars:
while we live may your way be ours.

"Standing Before Shelves of Cookbooks and Trying to Decide What to Make for Dinner"
Joseph Robert Mills

I remember how someone said
the best Italian dishes have no more
than four ingredients with the key
being freshness and quality,

"How to Make a Crab Cake"
January Gill O'Neil

Always, it’s a matter of guesswork
but you hold it together
by the simplest of ingredients,

for this is how the body learns to be generous,
to forgive the flaws inherited
and enjoy what lies ahead.

"Making a Salad"
Glen Sorestad

transformation—the rinsing and peeling,
slicing or dicing, required of each
separate veggie that will metamorphose
the random green host into the oneness
that is salad, 

"Ask Me"
Sue Ann Gleason

Ask me about my grandmother’s kitchen.
The sound of onions sizzling in a cast iron skillet,
the smell of garlic, the shape of her hands
chopping vegetables, teasing pie crust over a heap
of cinnamon soaked apples.

"For the Love of Avocados"
Diane Lockward

He took one half, then the other of the armadillo-
hided fruit and slid his spoon where flesh edged
against skin, working it under and around, sparing

the edible pulp. An artist working at an easel,
he filled the center holes with chopped tomatoes.

"Norimaki Sushi"
Betsy Miller

Plump, white oval grains of
Steamed sticky rice cling together
In the dish, round wooden handai,
Full like a waiting moon.
Fold in rice vinegar, salty-sweet.
Fan the scented clouds of steam.
Sushi rice—Sumeshi

"Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe"
Bill Holm

This soup is alive as any animal,
and the yeast and cream and rye
will sing inside you after eating
for a long time.

"Corned Beef and Cabbage"
George Bilgere

I can see her in the kitchen,   
Cooking up, for the hundredth time,   
A little something from her   
Limited Midwestern repertoire.

"Ribollita"
Donna Hilbert 

filling each space with aroma
of soup, saying supper, manga!
come eat, come safely, come home.

"When René Makes Peruvian Noodles and Huancaína"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

His gift to us: within moments of tasting,
we travel flavors centuries in the making.

Related Reading

• The Quotidian: Poems Celebrating the Everyday, the Ordinary
• Making Soup: A Pot Full of Poems
• A Cooking Compendium: 6 Recipes, 12 Cookbook Recommendations, and 4 Thoughts about Food in General
• Keep It Growing: Poems about Gardening
• Seriously Good Oatmeal Cookie Recipe 
• Classic All-Bran/Bran Buds Muffin Recipe: Best Bran Muffins Ever

*Bookshop.org affiliate link in case you don't have access to a local bookstore or library. If you purchase through this link I receive a tiny commission, which I'll donate to organizations that make our communities better with safer streets for all.