A Slice of Toasted Poetry

What's on the menu?  Poetry, a little bit of opera history, and-- believe it or not-- Melba Toast.  Named for Australian opera soprano Dame Nellie Melba and introduced to the world on this day in 1897, Melba Toast is a thinly sliced, lightly toasted, crispy bread treat.  A French hotel chef who happened to be an opera fan created Melba toast for Dame Nellie: she was, apparently, a picky eater with a sensitive digestive system.  Today, Poetry on Parade celebrates Melba Toast with a selection of tasty poems.  Do you like your poetry lightly browned or toasted to a crisp? 

The Toaster 

A silver-scaled Dragon with jaws flaming red

Sits at my elbow and toasts my bread.

I hand him fat slices, and then, one by one,

He hands them back when he sees they are done. 

--William Jay Smith

Poetry Paraders who shout and complain that buttered toast for breakfast is boring and rather plain may wish to consider, to ponder, perhaps to entertain Awful Ogre's Breakfast by Jack Prelutsky:

Oh breakfast, lovely breakfast,

You're the meal I savor most.

I sip a bit of gargoyle bile

And chew some ghoul on toast.

I linger over scrambled legs,

Complete with pickled feet,

Then finish with a piping bowl

Of steamy SCREAM OF WHEAT. 

Oh dear.  Joining Awful Ogre for breakfast might be biting off more than we can chew (that's an idiom meaning that we are taking on more than we can manage-- in this case, an Awful Ogre).  Ogres, by the way, are monsters often featured in folktales, mythology, and fiction.   Shrek is an ogre.  Generally, ogres have cranky temperaments, large heads, big muscles, lots of hair, and they like to eat... us.  Let's stick with toast and poetry:

Hungry for Poetry 

First of all I saw him chew

a tender Japanese haiku.

He ate a foot-long sonnet

with mustard spread upon it.

He downed a bag of ripe cinquains

while walking in the pouring rain.

He gulped an epic, chomped an ode,

wolfed a couplet to cure his cold.

He munched so many limericks,

they made him absolutely sick.

He tried a plate of fresh free verse;

but all that did was make things worse.

He took some onomatopoeia

to cure a case of diarrhea.

He ate a poem of sixteen lines,

and after that he felt just fine. 

-- from A Writing Kind of Day by Ralph Fletcher 

How to Eat a Poem 

Don't be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that
may run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
to throw away. 

-- Eve Merriam

Melba toast is sometimes served with soup and topped with melted cheese, but we'll take our toast with a ripe and juicy poem, if you please.  Bon Appétit!