Snacktime Sonata Challenge Winners

Well, your Snacktime Sonatas made us hungry, and that’s about the highest compliment we have. Food — taste, smell, sensation — is a powerful conduit to the past, to memories pleasurable and painful and sometimes bittersweet, a mixture of comfort and challenge. Congratulations to Penny Fuller for Sativa — it’s a first win for Penny — a hymn to the “secret, unbounded/freedoms” of fresh peas in the pod. The narrative voice of the poem doesn’t really want to be outside, but finds joy in the green things of the earth; this is a lovely work of resilience.

In second place comes Suze Kay’s Shirley Temple. It contrasts “the other side of youth” with memories of sugary Shirley Temples, maraschino cherry juice and showing off for boys … and brings in the real Shirley Temple in an ironic layering of image and reality. We admired this poem’s strong voice, its insouciant nerve.

And there were some fabulous runners-up, too. Quite a few of these poems showed how food crossed cultural boundaries across generations; Umami Crackers by Alison McBain was a particularly strong one in this line. J’s poem Bread & Jam for Myrtle showed how something very simple can be meaningful and is a tribute, too, to the beloved children’s book by Russell and Lillian Hoban, Bread and Jam for Frances. Lacy Loar-Gruenler’s Pickled Herring with my Dad is a prose poem of neat, compact structure that vividly conjures the passing of time.

What delicious entries! We’re so appreciative of your memories, your skill, your good taste. You can check out the full list of winners HERE and learn about our current challenges below: