2013—Day 28—Haiku Plus One

This is not the first time I have blatantly ripped off my friend Melinda’s photo idea. It’s been a year since I have actually admitted it although I’m sure I’ve done it without consciously making the effort. You can see my last ripoff admission here and you can see Melinda’s intriguing idea for today’s photo here. Her idea for “book spine poetry” so caught my attention that after reading her blog early this morning, I rounded up the books I thought might make an interesting poem and stacked them in a pile. When I got home this evening, photo-less, I decided to go ahead with my copy cat effort. The books were already stacked in the correct order. I just needed to get some lighting. After reading the poem over a few times, it sounded very Haiku-like to me. Sadly, there are 18 syllables, not 17, hence the title of my blog post.

“Life, medium raw
Cook like a rockstar, fabulous
Feasts, gone with the wind.”

There’s an extra syllable in the middle line; I suppose one could slur the word “fabulous” and change it to “fab’lous” making it sort of 17 syllables total. Regardless, I like the poem and I like the photo. I didn’t have to look hard for my book spine poetry inspiration, rather surprising since most of my reading of late is in the form of audiobooks, listened to while treading away at the gym. Not surprising is how many cooking related books were close at hand. But Keith Richard’s non-cooking themed tome, unless you consider frying one’s brain as cooking related, took me months to slog through. The two oldest books in the shot are “Fabulous Feasts” and “Gone With the Wind.” “Fabulous Feasts” was given to me by a friend more than 30 years ago, who thought I might enjoy reading about medieval cookery and ceremony. He was right. It is a fascinating read. And, this copy of “Gone With the Wind” is my mother’s original copy from 1939 with her name and the date inscribed in her beautiful hand inside the front cover.