This April marks the 30th iteration of National Poetry Month, which was launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996. To celebrate, the Literary Hub staff will be recommending one great poem to read every (work) day of the month. We make no claim (except when we do) that these poems are the “best” poems in any category; they are simply poems we love. The only other thing they all have in common is that they are available to read for free online, so you can enjoy them along with us. The internet is still good for some things, after all. Today we recommend:
Jane Wong’s “After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly”
This poem is so rich and spicy and crunchy and sticky that I feel like I could hold it in my hand. I love poems about food. I love poems that play with form. I love poems that you can feel between your teeth as you read. Wong’s poem gives me all of this and more. It’s truly a feast of a poem.
According to Wong, the poem was written to commemorate her ancestors who were lost to The Great Leap Forward, the largest famine in human history. Wong wrote “After Preparing the Altar” to feed these ghosts, to give them everything they wanted to eat. And the ghosts in this poem do eat. They eat everything, then suck the bones clean and eat them too. It’s an ode to food and feeding, an ode to the intensity of the physical world, both an evocation of starvation and its undoing. It’s the kind of poem that grabs you by the wrist and shakes you around a bit before it lets you go. “After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly” will make you hungry and fill you up all at once.
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