A Breakfast for Barbarians and the Kitchen Table When You’re Not There
Gwendolyn MacEwen was one of my first poetry loves. This next poem still gets me:
A Breakfast for Barbarians
by Gwendolyn MacEwen
my friends, my sweet barbarians,
there is that hunger which is not for food —
but an eye at the navel turns the appetite
round
with visions of some fabulous sandwich,
the brain’s golden breakfast
eaten with beasts
with books on plates
let us make an anthology of recipes,
let us edit for breakfast
our most unspeakable appetites —
let us pool spoons, knives
and all cutlery in a cosmic cuisine,
let us answer hunger
with boiled chimera
and apocalyptic tea,
an arcane salad of spiced bibles,
tossed dictionaries —
(O my barbarians
we will consume our mysteries)
and can we, can we slake the gaping eye of our desires?
we will sit around our hewn wood table
until our hair is long and our eyes are feeble,
eating, my people, O my insatiates,
eating until we are no more able
to jack up the jaws any longer —
to no more complain of the soul’s vulgar cavities,
to gaze at each other over the rust-heap of cutlery,
drinking a coffee that takes an eternity —
till, bursting, bleary,
we laugh, barbarians, and rock the universe —
and exclaim to each other over the table
over the table of bones and scrap metal
over the gigantic junk-heaped table:
by God that was a meal
Rob recently re-read The Rhetoric of Perspective: Realism and Illusionsim in Seventeenth Century Dutch Still Life Painting. So when I asked him, yes we have an exciting marriage, in which book there is a bit about breakfast still lifes, he handed this one to me. There is in fact a fantastic chapter in the book titled, “Truth in Breakfast Painting” which addresses perspective in terms of horror vacui and the void. The epigraph for the chapter is by Virginia Woolf, “Think of a kitchen table…when you’re not there.”
The author argues that the paintings of abundance by Claesz and De Heem, for example, are considered to be warnings and teach moderation. Choosing between “abundance and moderation, restriction and excess” will result in a struggle one way or the other. She says, “These paintings, and others like them thematize the moral dilemma of body versus soul, the evil attraction of wealth versus the peace of poverty, a life of ambition versus one of contemplation.”
I’ve used some of the typical Dutch still life elements in these photos – bread, fish (albeit mine are in a tin), lemons, cheese, and then of course the contemporary. Frozen waffles, Pop-Tarts, Froot Loops.
This isn’t a kitchen table in my photos, but maybe it will remind you of a breakfast you once ate, or served. I’m trying to say something about wealth, about abundance, about various struggles and hungers and unspeakable appetites. I’m not really done thinking about breakfast. It’s a deeper subject than all this. But this is a start. And I’ll continue at some point once I’m done sipping my apocalyptic tea, aka Diet Coke. In the meantime, think of a kitchen table….when you’re not there.
