Poetic Licence

Nov 8 2019

The taste of a fresh tomato

even a poet can only describe

as tomato.

If all language is metaphor

then perhaps this is best;

because here, there is no approximation,

no flawed comparisons

florid words

processed flavour.

It depends, of course

on how you taste

    . . . and when.

Sliced, quartered, halved.

Or eaten whole, like an apple,

plucked from its vine

on a sun-warmed day

cradled in one hand.

A bright tomato-red.

Your nose, almost touching

inhaling its floral/citrus scent.

The slight resistance

as you bite in,

a little give, then release

as you penetrate

its firm smooth skin.

Then the satisfying dive

into soft sweet pulp,

as sticky juice

dribbles down your chin

on your fresh white shirt.

The terroir

cultivar

degree of ripeness.

So each tomato is unique,

like taking poetic licence

and making it yours.

Tomato-y

tomato-like

tomato-ish.

A supermarket tomato,

hard and cold and tasteless

rescued from the back of the fridge.

I suppose this poem raises the age-old question of subjectivity: do we all experience the world the same way; is your colour red identical to mine?

But for me, it's more about my process as a poet. Am I a scientist, reducing everything to its elements, trying to describe and reproduce every attribute and aspect? That is, my tendency to over-write; to spoon-feed the reader. Or do I trust the reader, and all I need do is point her in the right direction, inviting her to call up her own memory and imagination? This is the insecurity of writing too little, of asking the reader to do all the work.

But even more than that, it's simply a fun poem. It involves two of the things I enjoy most: First, the exercise of close observation: the slowing down of time, the narrowing-in of focus. And second, word-play and the mouth-feel of language.

I cannot do justice to the taste of a good tomato. Except to say “the taste of a good tomato”: ripe, sun-warmed, and freshly off the vine. So much better to simply hand the reader a tomato than try to reproduce it in words. Language can only do so much. Poetry is, at best, a pallid version of life.

When I sent the initial rough draft off to one of my first readers, I began my email with what follows. I decided to include it here, since it says something about my process.

I've kind of written this poem before. My only excuse for plagiarizing myself is that I sat down to write, and this is what came. Perhaps it was reading the latest poem in The Atlantic (didn't like it much, but that's beside the point) which had something to do with flavour, and so planted a seed in my mind.

 

But what is actually much more interesting about this one is that I wrote directly onto the computer:  fingers tapping away on the keyboard, rather than holding a pen and writing by hand on a blank sheet of paper. I wonder how much process affects the way I write? Can you see a difference here?

And yes, the writing seems to have become compulsive. I seem to be churning out a new one every day. Oh well. I guess as addictions go, it could be worse! Money ...power ...meth ...sex ...food. So at least it's not fattening, dangerous, ethically dubious, or bad for the teeth!