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Taste is a lyric meditation on one of our five senses. Structured as a series of ¿small bites,¿ the book considers the ways that we ingest the world. Through flavorful explorations of the sweet, the sour, the salty, the bitter, and umami, Jehanne Dubrow reflects on the nature of taste.
List of contents
Aperitif: And I Will Tell You What You Are
Sweet
Sour
Salty
Bitter
Umami
Digestif: O, to Take What We Love Inside
Acknowledgments
Works Cited
Index
About the author
Jehanne Dubrow is a professor of creative writing at the University of North Texas. She is the author of nine poetry collections, including most recently Wild Kingdom (2021), and a book of creative nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes (2019). Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, New England Review, Colorado Review, and the Southern Review.
Summary
Taste is a lyric meditation on one of our five senses, which we often take for granted. Structured as a series of “small bites,” the book considers the ways that we ingest the world, how we come to know ourselves and others through the daily act of tasting.
Through flavorful explorations of the sweet, the sour, the salty, the bitter, and umami, Jehanne Dubrow reflects on the nature of taste. In a series of short, interdisciplinary essays, she blends personal experience with analysis of poetry, fiction, music, and the visual arts, as well as religious and philosophical texts. Dubrow considers the science of taste and how taste transforms from a physical sensation into a metaphor for discernment.
Taste is organized not so much as a linear dinner served in courses but as a meal consisting of meze, small plates of intensely flavored discourse.
Additional text
In the form of a very elegantly written essay, Dubrow argues that taste is the main form of access to the world and others. And also, and most importantly, to ourselves. A poetic homage to the power and mysteries of taste.
