Fruit poems

Just saw this post by germuska and it reminded me that fruit is often a theme in poetry. For instance, I recently PMmed these Fig poems to Figmolly, just for fun.

I also remember A Late Aubade by Richard Wilbur, which in my mind reads something like,(deepest apologies to Mr. Wilbur)
blah, blah, blah;
blah, blah, blah;
blah, blah, blah;
And bring us up some chilled white wine,
And some blue cheese, and crackers, and some fine
Ruddy-skinned pears.

I think of Wallace Stevens as the great poet of fruit, to wit:

With my whole body I taste these peaches,
I touch them and smell them. Who speaks?
I absorb them as the Angevine
Absorbs Anjou. I see them as a lover sees,
As a young lover sees the first buds of spring
And as the black Spaniard plays his guitar.

I wrote a poem about a mango once.

Can't forget about Ogden Nash...

Taste Buds, En Garde!

Although I'll eat the strawberry when frozen
It's not the very berry I'd have chosen.
The naughty admen claim with gall divine
That it is better than the genu-ine,
New language they devise to sing its praise,
But only le bon Dieu can coin a fraise.

Always hard to follow the wonderful Ogden Nash, but here’s Eugene Field, “The Children’s Poet,” (of “Wynken, Blynken and Nod” fame):

The Little Peach

A little peach in the orchard grew,--
A little peach of emerald hue;
Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew,
It grew.

One day, passing that orchard through,
That little peach dawned on the view
Of Johnny Jones and his sister Sue--
Them two.

Up at that peach a club they threw--
Down from the stem on which it grew
Fell that peach of emerald hue.
Mon Dieu!

John took a bite and Sue a chew,
And then the trouble began to brew,--
Trouble the doctor couldn't subdue.
Too true!

Under the turf where the daisies grew
They planted John and his sister Sue,
And their little souls to the angels flew,--
Boo hoo!

What of that peach of the emerald hue,
Warmed by the sun, and wet by the dew?
Ah, well, its mission on earth is through.
Adieu!

(1880)

Also from Stevens, the opening lines of the great "Sunday Morning":

"Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,"

with further references to plums, pears, sweet berries, and ripe fruit further on down the line.

But the fruitiest poem I know is Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market":

MORNING and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries-
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries--
All ripe together
In summer weather--
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy;
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye,
Come buy, come buy."

. . . with much more as the poem continues (and as the fruits get sloppy and the goblins get nasty).

After all that, dare we eat a peach?

jbw wrote:Also from Stevens, the opening lines of the great "Sunday Morning":

"Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,"

with further references to plums, pears, sweet berries, and ripe fruit further on down the line.

But the fruitiest poem I know is Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market":

MORNING and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries-
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries--
All ripe together
In summer weather--
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy;
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye,
Come buy, come buy."

. . . with much more as the poem continues (and as the fruits get sloppy and the goblins get nasty).

After all that, dare we eat a peach?

Amusing mention of the Rossetti poem. As I recall, the central character (narrator?) though initially hesitant finally comes to love goblin fruit (reflecting the stereotype of repressed Victorian sexuality...as I recall from my early 70's lit class).

I cried when I read this in Spanish, and this Stephen Mitchell translation manages to capture the wonder and wistful thankfulness we have for that which we eat.

Ode
by Pablo Neruda
from the Spanish

The tender-hearted artichoke got dressed as a warrior,
erect, built a little cupola, stood impermeable under its scales,
around it the crazy vegetables bristled,
grew astonishing tendrils, cattails, bulbs, in the subsoil
slept the carrot with its red whiskers,
the grapevine dried the runners through which it carries the wine,
the cabbage devoted itself to trying on skirts,
oregano to perfuming the world,

and the gentle artichoke stood there in the garden,
dressed as a warrior, burnished like a pomegranate,
proud,

and one day along with the others
in large willow baskets,
it traveled to the market
to realize its dream; the army.

Amid the rows never was it so military as at the fair,
men among the vegetables with their white shirts
were marshals of the artichokes,
the tight ranks, the voices of command,
and the detonation of a falling crate,

but then comes Maria with her basket,
picks an artichoke,
isn't afraid of it,
examines it, holds it to the light as if it were an egg,
buys it,
mixes it up in her bag with a pair of shoes,
with a head of cabbage and a bottle of vinegar
until entering the kitchen she submerges it in a pot.

Thus ends in peace the career of the armored vegetable
which is called artichoke,
then scale by scale we undress its delight
and we eat the peaceful flesh of its green heart.

beans, beans, the musical fruit.........

JasonM wrote:beans, beans, the musical fruit.........

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

-William Carlos Williams

fruit poems

Carlos

stilettos built of black bone
teeth burnt back past the gumline

I licked his
cocaine-shadowed bicuspids
so sue me

his lips
yum-o

Eating the peach, I feel like a murderer.
Time and darkness mean nothing to me....
--Henry Cole (Contemporary and still in copyright, so I'm linking.)

Partly about eating, partly about representations of fruit, from the October 20, 2008 issue of the New Yorker:

"Mu Ch'i's Persimmons" by Gary Snyder

Two others from the New Yorker:

"Cloudberries" by Michael Longley

"Dream with Flowers and Bowl of Fruit" by Deborah Warren

Blueberries

"You ought to have seen what I saw on my way
To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day:
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!
And all ripe together, not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!"

"I don't know what part of the pasture you mean."

"You know where they cut off the woods -- let me see --
It was two years ago -- or no! -- can it be
No longer than that? -- and the following fall
The fire ran and burned it all up but the wall."

"Why, there hasn't been time for the bushes to grow.
That's always the way with the blueberries, though:
There may not have been the ghost of a sign
Of them anywhere under the shade of the pine,
But get the pine out of the way, you may burn
The pasture all over until not a fern
Or grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick,
And presto, they're up all around you as thick
And hard to explain as a conjuror's trick."

"It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit.
I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot.
And after all really they're ebony skinned:
The blue's but a mist from the breath of the wind,
A tarnish that goes at a touch of the hand,
And less than the tan with which pickers are tanned."

"Does Mortenson know what he has, do you think?"

"He may and not care and so leave the chewink
To gather them for him -- you know what he is.
He won't make the fact that they're rightfully his
An excuse for keeping us other folk out."

"I wonder you didn't see Loren about."

"The best of it was that I did. Do you know,
I was just getting through what the field had to show
And over the wall and into the road,
When who should come by, with a democrat-load
Of all the young chattering Lorens alive,
But Loren, the fatherly, out for a drive."

"He saw you, then? What did he do? Did he frown?"

"He just kept nodding his head up and down.
You know how politely he always goes by.
But he thought a big thought -- I could tell by his eye --
Which being expressed, might be this in effect:
'I have left those there berries, I shrewdly suspect,
To ripen too long. I am greatly to blame.'"

"He's a thriftier person than some I could name."

"He seems to be thrifty; and hasn't he need,
With the mouths of all those young Lorens to feed?
He has brought them all up on wild berries, they say,
Like birds. They store a great many away.
They eat them the year round, and those they don't eat
They sell in the store and buy shoes for their feet."

"Who cares what they say? It's a nice way to live,
Just taking what Nature is willing to give,
Not forcing her hand with harrow and plow."

"I wish you had seen his perpetual bow --
And the air of the youngsters! Not one of them turned,
And they looked so solemn-absurdly concerned."

"I wish I knew half what the flock of them know
Of where all the berries and other things grow,
Cranberries in bogs and raspberries on top
Of the boulder-strewn mountain, and when they will crop.
I met them one day and each had a flower
Stuck into his berries as fresh as a shower;
Some strange kind -- they told me it hadn't a name."

"I've told you how once not long after we came,
I almost provoked poor Loren to mirth
By going to him of all people on earth
To ask if he knew any fruit to be had
For the picking. The rascal, he said he'd be glad
To tell if he knew. But the year had been bad.
There had been some berries -- but those were all gone.
He didn't say where they had been. He went on:
'I'm sure -- I'm sure' -- as polite as could be.
He spoke to his wife in the door, 'Let me see,
Mame, we don't know any good berrying place?'
It was all he could do to keep a straight face.

"If he thinks all the fruit that grows wild is for him,
He'll find he's mistaken. See here, for a whim,
We'll pick in the Mortensons' pasture this year.
We'll go in the morning, that is, if it's clear,
And the sun shines out warm: the vines must be wet.
It's so long since I picked I almost forget
How we used to pick berries: we took one look round,
Then sank out of sight like trolls underground,
And saw nothing more of each other, or heard,
Unless when you said I was keeping a bird
Away from its nest, and I said it was you.
'Well, one of us is.' For complaining it flew
Around and around us. And then for a while
We picked, till I feared you had wandered a mile,
And I thought I had lost you. I lifted a shout
Too loud for the distance you were, it turned out,
For when you made answer, your voice was as low
As talking -- you stood up beside me, you know."

"We sha'n't have the place to ourselves to enjoy --
Not likely, when all the young Lorens deploy.
They'll be there to-morrow, or even to-night.
They won't be too friendly -- they may be polite --
To people they look on as having no right
To pick where they're picking. But we won't complain.
You ought to have seen how it looked in the rain,
The fruit mixed with water in layers of leaves,
Like two kinds of jewels, a vision for thieves."

-- Robert Frost (1874-1963). From "North of Boston," 1914.