{"id":3751,"date":"2011-05-13T17:00:09","date_gmt":"2011-05-13T21:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lanternreview.com\/blog\/?p=3751"},"modified":"2011-05-12T13:54:10","modified_gmt":"2011-05-12T17:54:10","slug":"curated-prompt-stephen-h-sohn-food-pornography-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/13\/curated-prompt-stephen-h-sohn-food-pornography-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"Curated Prompt: Stephen Hong Sohn – “Food Pornography Poems”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Stephen Hong Sohn<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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This May, as part of our celebration of APIA Heritage Month, we have been asking teachers and writers of Asian American poetry to share favorite writing exercises with us.\u00a0 This week, in acknowledgement of the fact that the work of reading and theorizing Asian American poetry is as important as the work of writing it, we’re changing things up a bit by adding a perspective from the world of literary criticism to the mix.\u00a0 For today’s Curated Prompt, we have the privilege of collaborating with one of our regular guest contributors\u2014Asian American Literature scholar and Stanford professor Stephen Hong Sohn<\/a>\u2014as he writes about one of his aesthetic interests and shares, for the very first time, a sample of his own (hitherto secret!) creative work.
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Alexis Kienlen\u2019s She Dreams in Red<\/em><\/a> begins with my favorite kind of poem: the \u201cfood pornography\u201d poem, which immediately problematizes issues of authenticity and Asian American identity. The lyric speaker often contemplates ethnic heritage as routed through her mixed-race background. What does it mean to so unabashedly crave ethnic foods, the lyric speaker seems to ask?\u00a0 What can one claim ownership over, and what can one not?<\/p>\n

Here is an excerpt from the opening poem, entitled \u201cChinese Caf\u00e9\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201ci want to savour pork dumplings,
\ndribble hoisin, garlic and black bean sauce over rice,
\nwant to twist and drip noodles into my mouth,
\nlick my lips\u201d (11).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The ending of the poem leaves us with this line: \u201cthis Chinese caf\u00e9 stays open all night,\u201d and we, as voracious readers, couldn\u2019t really be happier.<\/p>\n

Marking ethnicity is always a challenge within poems, but many Asian American poets such as Li-Young Lee and Aimee Nezhukumatathil have been able to explore gastronomic tropes with much complexity, and often with much humor.\u00a0 At once, we understand that food can mark ethnicity, but that it can also be deconstructed or employed to complicate superficial consumptive habits. Food also provides a particularly rich terrain of vocabulary. As someone who can\u2019t cook myself, I find cookbooks endlessly fascinating and endlessly ethnic. Frank Chin once made a scathing critique of writers who employ food pornography as a way to mark themselves as native informants, but it\u2019s difficult to know when excess is intended or not. For the purposes of this exercise, we’ll intend to push this excess, as Kienlen does when craving those \u201cwontons\u201d and \u201ccustard tarts\u201d (11). Here is a food pornography poem I\u2019d like to share:<\/p>\n

Vietnamese food pornography poem #2: the sacred and profane<\/strong><\/p>\n

on this misted early morning
\nthe haze ever so beta-particulate
\njapan\u2019s nuclear crisis compared to Chernobyl
\nbut culinary erotics distract me
\nthe sensuous curve of the baked egg tart from Kang Lac
\nhand pressed pork puffs and steaming pork buns
\nso coy under the dim lights of Asian Garden Mall
\nYum Cha Caf\u00e9 boasts the understated elegance
\nof coconut crusted mochi balls with taro curd filling
\nflirtatious with such pliant, feathered skins
\nnext door, B\u00e1nh Mi Saigon delivers me
\ninto succulent hybridities: liver p\u00e2t\u00e9, cold cut meats,
\npickled carrots and turnips, all on French baguettes
\npostcolonial oriental cosmic<\/p>\n

can i be so apolitically gastronomic
\nin these electromagnetic times
\nwhat intersections do i allow at Bolsa and Magnolia?
\nvendors at food stalls gesture in Vietnamese
\nfrown, furrowed brows, shrugged shoulders
\ni profess that i am purely Korean
\nretreat into a bustling noodle shop
\nwhere my psychic sukiyaki emits a spectral glow,
\nbrains scrambled in sinewy ramen, measured in sieverts
\ntripe floats on radioactive, soupy currents
\nbulgogi strips infesting this curry-flavored broth
\nas i later salt my ph\u1edf with iodine and wasabi<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, let\u2019s see your version of a \u201cfood pornography\u201d poem.<\/p>\n

Prompt: write a poem that engages greedily, lasciviously\u2014even pornographically\u2014with the sensual pleasures of consuming “home” or “ethnic” foods in order to challenge, reimagine, or push familiar culinary markers of ethnicity into the realm of playful excess.<\/strong><\/p>\n

* * *<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stephen Hong Sohn<\/strong> is an Assistant Professor of English at Stanford University.<\/em>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This May, as part of our celebration of APIA Heritage Month, we have been asking teachers and writers of Asian American poetry to share favorite writing exercises with us.\u00a0 This week, in acknowledgement of the fact that the work of reading and theorizing Asian American poetry is as important as the work of writing it, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[627,13,217],"tags":[314,629,106,62],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3751"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3751"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3803,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3751\/revisions\/3803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lanternreview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}