This poem is inspired by M.F.K. Fisher’s "How to Cook a Wolf." I was struck by Fisher’s lyrical prose and how she reimagined the form of the “cookbook” as a space where we could have a conversation on hunger and survival during crisis. By borrowing Fisher’s title I wanted to invoke her grief-ridden idea of having to eat a beautiful animal like a wolf and let it loom in the background. I wanted to sit with that unsettling energy.
Nathan Xavier Osorio on "How to Cook a Wolf" |
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 | This April, Poetry Daily would like to turn the spotlight on YOU, the loving READER of poetry. What is it that makes you give yourself over to a poem? Which poem in Poetry Daily made you think, surprised you, moved you, or changed your world just a little? Choose any poem from our archive of more than two thousand poems since 2018 and tell us about it in 100 words or so. We’re not expecting a “professional” answer but one from your heart, nothing is too trivial—for a chance to be featured in our groundbreaking What Sparks Poetry series and win a free book! |
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"Oluwaseun Olayiwola, the First Fitzcarraldo-Published Poet"
"The poems have the flavour of 2020 in their cultural indications. There’s a poem called 'Chlorine,' for example, that has George Floyd’s name in it. There are some poems that mention disease and 'My Mother Raised a Normal Man,' which tries to think about Blackness in a head-on way. But more than those cultural indicators, it was the sense of solitude that really made its way into my work—this profound, and sometimes terrifying, sense of aloneness."
via ANOTHER |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Gregory Pardlo on Other Arts
"I had been working on a poem 'about' my mother (who is also named Marion), and I was struggling to find an approach that would discover something worthwhile about one or both of us while honoring the mystery of difference that separates us. What was driving my interest in this poem? Was it love or some attempt to control my mother, however symbolically? I knew I couldn’t write fairly (forget objectively) about this person whose identity was so important to my own." |
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