[Scott Miller]

Originally Posted by Marcia Karp

Grey and dusty spices (is cream of tartar a spice?) might be tasteless but are not poisonous. The last minute hyperbole of poison mars the very nice moment of insight and poetic spark given by grain of salt.

Cream of tartar is sold with the spices and lives in my spice rack forever now that I have an electric whisk. I'd call it a spice in poetry... or prose...

Still wondering what exactly the insight in "grain of salt" is. It has the clever spark to be sure. But wrapping my head around the elements of the metaphor is proving more difficult than I'd have thought.

[Eileen Cleary]

"My double-decker spice rack glares at me.
In its glass eyes of marjoram and mace,"
too, only mine is figurative and hasn't even made it to actual.

My figurative spices are similarly not impressed with me, so I really like this poem.

I also admire its construction and fluidity.

Eileen

[Kate Benedict]

“Most of our days are bland” is the topic and what better way to explore it than with this extended metaphor of unused spices, losing their tastiness over time, never to flavor that exotic souffle. (I can almost hear the cook’s past excuses in the background: no, a souffle is too much trouble and it may only go limp in the oven and disappoint.)

The more I read this, the more I enjoy it. I do agree that “poison” may be too extreme and dark an image here. The speaker takes her sorrow over all this, her regret, with a grain of salt; her unambitious cooking—and the ordinariness of days—may have worth too. And the sonnet itself is quite airy, isn't it, a fine souffle in its own right.

[Toni Seger]

This is very cleverly drawn and I appreciate the obvious effort that went into it. However, other than its charm, it does not emotionally engage me and that is my litmus test for poetry.

I will also admit to a certain prejudice about kitchen poems which, I believe, were the very best poems Silvia Plath ever wrote. Normally, I enjoy cooking, but Plath made kitchens terrifying, yet fascinating, places. When I read those poems, I'm completely enclosed in Plath's personal nightmare which is weird, scary and totally engaging. It's very hard to compete with this experience, I'll admit, and that's probably getting in the way for me with this poem.

[Tim Murphy]

I like this poem very well. My younger sisters recently bought me an enormous spice rack and stocked it with stuff I'll never use. What the f*** is Mace? My spices look at me accusatorily, so this really works for me, and I agree with Mary that this is probably Michael's.

[RCL]

A grain of salt is part of an antidote for poison? A tasty and tart serving for the bakeoff.

[Julie]

I quite like this. I took the "poison" line as a commentary about how worrying about and regretting missed opportunity can destroy us, if we're always fussing over what we didn't do, we can't appreciate life as it is. But this narrator is thinking "Wait, this isn't a matter of fault and blame. It just is." That's the grain of salt, the refusal to let the rhetorical loss of opportunity be bigger and more important than it really is.

In a way, the N's failure to use all of the available spices in the spice rack is indicative of how we should approach, and castigate, the N, and how the N should castigate him or herself—half-heartedly, and with a sense of irony. The tools are there, but why use them?

Enjoyed.

[ross hamilton hill]

Olēka

The awareness of how few days are memorable.
....... from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
No need to repeat the Oleka, also the epigram would look better in a smaller size.


some basil and oregano to test
the limits of a bland spaghetti sauce,
Nice lines, although oregano is not melodic.

and dill weed fades to a diminished gray,
Nice line

my days and months and years fly — as they must —
Would prefer commas not dashes makes 'as they must' stand out for no good reason.

without a chocolate cardamom soufflé.
Yum, never seen cardamon spelt cardamom, is that Mom in a cardigan?

I take this poison with a grain of salt.
Agree 'poison' is too drastic for the poem.

[R. S. Gwynn]

I worry about "poison" in the last line. Almost wish it was "these potions." But I guess potions are liquid unless it's the pellet with the poison in the vessel with the pestle.

[Sharon Fish Mooney]

Made me want to chuck a lot of my unused spices. I vote too for ditching the definition -- I enjoyed looking it up --I think the definition as given is too limiting -- I agree r/t poison -- the last line seems to need a word or phrase that relates back more to the title's non-culinary meaning though not sure what