Hot dogs, hamburgers, spaghetti and meatballs!

Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow

Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme

Sherry. And sponges.

I'm too disorderly to keep this up.

~~~~~~~~~~

Oh yes, I remember what I was trying to say. Theory and practice, recipe poems.

Every poem is not a recipe and every recipe is not a poem. But some manage to achieve synchronicity of purpose.

Does the recipe poem have to be edible? My first response is No. I think it inhibits the nature of poetry to establish such a restrictive requirement. On the other hand, what if the poet writes something quite poisonous? Would the reader be smart enough not to cook and eat it? Should it come with a warning label? Who would buy a cookbook plastered with disclaimers, "Eat at your own risk"?

And if the editor decides to play it safe and require edibility, who will dare to do the taste-testing?

Moving along, what about the recipes for the non-food substance? The poet has quite natural access to these, unlike the cook and the actual hungry person. Remedios and Leonora came up with "recipes and advice for scaring away inopportune dreams, insomnia, and deserts of quicksand under the bed." Also, a recipe "specially designed to stimulate a dream of being the king of England." And one (created in one of their more normal moments) "to stimulate erotic dreams."

And what about alchemy? Will have to study this further. Gosh, sometimes I wish I had the patience to write a fully developed essay.

(quotes from R. Varo's notebook, as quoted in Janet A. Kaplan, Remedios Varo, Unexpected Journeys)