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Une femme fait cuire le pain (Woman Baking
Bread) |
Bread come in many forms: white or whole wheat loaves (sliced and unsliced), corn bread, biscuits, challah, pumpernickel, sourdough, pita, French bread, tortillas, and so many more. Bread plays a big role in many cultures and religions, and is often associated with family memories. My grandmother baked bread without reference to a recipe. My dad liked bread with every meal. My husband has toast for breakfast almost every morning. At The Clearing in Door County, where I have participated in poetry workshops, many meals feature special kinds of bread. That is part of the charm of spending a week there.
Poet Carole Croll emphasizes the sensuousness of bread:
Bread
Is any other food as sensuous
as bread?
Bread, light and airy, dainty as a damsel
in a gossamer dream. Bread, dark and grainy,
hearty and solid as a hero on a steed. Bread,
soft curves and floured crust flirting
from the baker’s shelf, a fair and fickle
maiden. Bread, all seeded edge
and coarsely textured surfaces posing
like a chiseled cheek, a stubble-bearded
man. Bread, round and smooth, yielding
to a squeeze like an acquiescent breast. Bread,
dense and contoured, flexing like a muscled
chest, a Herculean man. Bread, paired with wine
and a portion of cheese splayed on the
breadboard.
Mmmmmm. Bread, warm as candlelight, loaf-
full of bliss, poised for the mouth, a buttery kiss.
~ Carole Croll
From A Hundred Pairs of Eyes: Poems by Carole Croll (Kelsay Books, 2021), p. 27. Used by permission. Croll retains copyright.
Grandmother’s Bread
When I asked Grandmother how to bake bread,
she said put on an apron, gather the ingredients.
Roll up your sleeves. Pour out a mound of flour.
Make a valley in the white mountain, she said,
and plant yeast. Let a little salt snow fall.
Make streams of egg white and melted butter flow
before plopping down golden yolk suns.
Let your fingers press and turn, mix and knead,
turn and fold, knead and turn to the rhythm
of your life, till it feels right. Roll it into a ball
round as the earth. Cover with a flour-sack towel.
Preheat the oven, grease the pans. Let the dough
rest while you sit with hot coffee and a neighbor.
Let the leaven have its way with friendship and dough.
Push the dough back down; press as life presses you
and your neighbor whose husband drinks too much.
Fold and knead, turn and fold, till it’s ready to grow.
Break and roll it into loaves. Put them in pans
and into the oven. In half an hour, pull out golden loaves.
Slice one hot, serve with honey-butter and fresh coffee
to that friend who craves bread, who needs something
warm and sweet to get her through another day.
~ Wilda Morris
“Grandmother’s Bread,” Alimentum, November 2015 (http://www.alimentumjournal.com/grandmothers-bread-by-wilda-mo/#.Vmtxsb_zl-U). Reprinted in Distilled Lives, Vol. 4, ed. Kathleen Robinson (Illinois State Poetry Society, 2018), p. 94. Also published by Quill & Parchment (May 2021) at http://quillandparchment.com/archives/May2021/gran.html.
A couple of bread poems on the Internet:
“Bread” by Richard Levine, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56501/bread-56d2390fb7dce.
“All Bread” by Margaret Atwood, https://onbeing.org/poetry/all-bread/.
The June Challenge:
The challenge for this month is a poem featuring bread. Your poem may be literal (as are the two example poems) or metaphorical but not poems where bread is used to mean money. Your poem may be serious or humorous, either free verse or a form. Be creative! Note that the blog format does not accommodate shaped poems or long lines; if a poem with long lines is used, the lines have to be broken in two, with the second part indented (as in the poem “Lilith,” one of the May 2018 winners), or the post has to use small print. Note, too, that poems over 25 lines are at a disadvantage.
Poems could be disqualified if the guidelines are not followed. Submit your poem by June 15.
1-Title your poem unless it is in a form that discourages titles.
2-Single-space.
3-Whether you put your poem in the body of your email or in an attachment or both, please put your submission in this order (on in one place):
Your poem
Your name
Publication data if your poem was previously published
A brief third-person bio
Your email address – it saves me a lot of work if you put your email address at the end of your submission.
4-Please keep the poem on the left margin (standard 1” margin). Do not put any part of your submission on a colored background. No colored type. Do not use a fancy font and do not use a header or footer.
5-You may submit a published poem if you retain copyright, but please include publication data. This applies to poems published in books, journals, newspapers, or on the Internet. Poems already used on this blog are not eligible to win, but the poets may submit a different poem.
6-The deadline is midnight, Central Time Zone, June 15. Poems submitted after the deadline will not be considered. There is no charge to enter, so there are no monetary rewards. Winners are published on this blog.
7-Please don’t stray too from “family-friendly” language (some children and teens read this blog).
8- No simultaneous submissions, please. You should know by the end of the month whether or not your poem will be published.
9-The poet retains copyright on each poem. If a previously unpublished poem wins and is published elsewhere later, please give credit to this blog. I do not register copyright with the US copyright office, but by US law, the copyright belongs to the writer unless the writer assigns it to someone else.
10-Decision of the judge or judges is final.
11-If the same poet wins three months in a row (which has not happened thus far), he or she will be asked not to submit the following two months.
12-Send one poem only.
How to Submit Your Poem:
1-Send your poem to wildamorris4[at]gmail[dot]com (substitute the @ sign for “at” and a . for “dot”). The poem must respond in some way to the specific challenge for the month.
2-Put “May Poetry Challenge Submission” FOLLOWED BY YOUR NAME in the subject line of your email.
3-Submission of a poem gives permission for the poem to be posted on the blog if it is a winner, so be sure that you put your name exactly as you would like it to appear if you do win at the end of the poem.
4-Poems may be pasted into an email or sent as an attachment or both (Doc, Docx, rich text or plain text; no pdf files, please). Please do not indent the poem or center it on the page. It helps if you submit the poem in the format used on the blog (Title and poem left-justified; title in bold (not all capital letters); your name at the bottom of the poem). Put everything in the order listed above, either in the body of the email or in an attachment or both.
6-Also, please do not use multiple spaces instead of punctuation in the middle of lines. I have no problem with poets using that technique (I sometimes do it myself). However, I have difficulty getting the blog to accept and maintain extra spaces.
Poems shorter than 40 lines are preferred.
Bios:
Carole Croll has returned to her native Pennsylvania after an extended residence in the Chicago area. She is a former teacher of English Language Learners. She was a massage therapist as well. Her first collection of poetry, The Gift Forthcoming, was published in 2000. Her most recent book, A Hundred Pairs of Eyes, was published in 2021 by Kelsey Books. She has been awarded by The Nevada State Poetry Society, Poets and Patrons of Chicago, and The Illinois State Poetry Society.
Wilda
Morris grew up in Iowa City, Iowa, where she learned to bake bread by watching her grandmother. Her favorite home-baked bread is the kind she makes using a recipe for challah, but substituting whole wheat flour for half of the white flour in the recipe. She lives and bakes in Illinois.
©Wilda Morris
