Vox Populi
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Sandy Solomon: Making Soup
Where sliced onions and crushed garlic
merge, chuttering in oil,
you stand and stir, the kitchen a pungent
blur of familiar cooking smells.
Who would have guessed before this year
how cheerful this simple chore would feel
now that the sick room’s silence starts
beyond the swinging kitchen door.
In here, something can be done:
green knuckles of broccoli to split,
carrots and spuds to strip and cut,
all set to simmer an hour or more,
then milled, herbed, seasoned and turned
in the mug he sips, his face intent
on taste’s still surprising gifts:
something given, something received,
small pleasure when few remain.
Why else the seconds? His slow spoon
clinks as it finds a final taste.
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Sandy Solomon
Sandy Solomon is the author of Pears, Lake, Sun published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker and The New Republic. She divides her time between Nashville, Tennessee and Suffolk, England.
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Making food for others, with such care, really is an act of love.
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To my mind , “Making Soup” evokes the heroism of individuals around the world who persist in performing their healing work, even if few of their patients survive. This short poignant poem grounded in the here and now and in tactile food ingredients nevertheless ripples into the near and distant past of epidemics such as Covid, (recalled by the patient’s sense of taste), Ebola (recalled by the vervet’s wild alarm call), AIDS (recalled by the suggested setting of a soup kitchen, hospital ward or nursing home with swinging doors). What an emotionally-weighted yet lyrically delicate poem.
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sorry for the unintended duplication!
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Great response, Therese!
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To my mind , “Making Soup” evokes the heroism of individuals around the world who persist in performing their healing work, even if few of their patients survive. This short poignant poem grounded in the here and now and in tactile food ingredients nevertheless ripples into the near and distant past of epidemics such as Covid, (recalled by the patient’s sense of taste), Ebola (recalled by the vervet’s wild alarm call), AIDS (recalled by the suggested setting of a soup kitchen, hospital ward or nursing home with swinging doors). What an emotionally-weighted yet lyrically delicate poem.
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I adore how subtle and loving this poems is, all through its imagery. Thank you, Sandy!
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Such an evocative poem, so visceral – ‘small pleasure when few remain’ says so much. Grateful to have encountered this treasure.
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Cooking and eating breakfast together with my adult granddaughter yesterday. Such a delight to share a meal, something I took for granted before. This poem is so comforting.
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If you were creating an anthology of love poetry, this could be the perfect central one — So many ways Sandy Solomon cares in this making and sharing (and receiving). There’s comfort and sensual delight in a situation so often only a thin gruel. It is not only the sickroom but the whole world that benefits from this gift. It’s the beauty of the journey made together. Just to read it here lessens my own anxieties.
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In this time of chaos and oppression, we must not forget to take care of ourselves and the ones we love. Cooking is essential. When times are bad, we need to maintain our strength, so we can take advantage of opportunity when it comes.
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“In here something can be done.”
What a refuge cooking has become for me Sandy—thing, at 70 I never saw on my horizon—and I believe for that very reason, that powerful turn of your lovely poem.
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Love this poem. And what a fine word “chuttering” which I suspect is a neologism and so right for the sound depicted.
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Yes, I love Sandy’s poems for their perfect craft and subtle imagination.
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such a tactile, olfactory and comforting poem –the value in the familiar act of caring that can sustain us. Thanks!
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I agree completely, Emily. Thanks for the praise of Sandy’s skill and imagination.
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