This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and retired professor of English and creative writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
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Welcome to Poetry Moment. I’m Marjorie Maddox
The topic of poems can be light, heavy—or both at the same time. Today’s poem by Richard Krohn is an ars poetica, a poem about poetry. But wait—it’s also about pancakes! Who can resist a poem that makes you hungry, makes you laugh, and makes you think, all at the same time?
Richard Krohn has lived in Pennsylvania, east and west, for 26 years. By car and bicycle, and through extensive history-writing, he knows the state well. He currently teaches at Moravian University in Bethlehem. “Fog Off The Allegheny” is forthcoming in Keystone: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania.
The inspiration for today’s poem, “Pancakes” by Richard Krohn, comes from reading an interview in the literary magazine Rattle. There, one author argues that poetry needs to involve “[t]ruths that are deep, not just ‘I ate pancakes for breakfast.’ ” Although he agrees, Richard Krohn also took this as a challenge. He explains that his poem "Pancakes". . . via hyperbole, playfully explores the morality, motives, emotion, childhood memory, and of course the sensory experiences of eating pancakes, throwing in societal clutter regarding race, conspiracy (UFOs), and national security.” Grab some maple syrup and enjoy today’s poem.
Here’s “Pancakes” by Richard Krohn
“Truths that are deep, not just ‘I ate pancakes for breakfast.’ ”-- from an interview in Rattle Winter ’08, p. 182
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For breakfast I ate pancakes, gluttony’s third Circle of Hell,
spiraled with unconditional love from Aunt Jemima,
the first woman I ever had a crush on.
Made them myself, cracking eggs, whisking them into flour
while butter bubbled edges of the cast-iron skillet, then in went
the beige lava, viscosity in a lovers’ spat with gravity.
I side-forked the layered mouthfuls and the stack gave way,
sprang back. Pancake geometries held aloft, I downed them
with Caribbeans of coffee, wondering if those who spotted
UFO’s above Roswell, NM had just eaten pancakes,
and whether a flapjack slapped into a DVD player
would turn into a thriller about the end of hunger.
I imagined a CD big as a pancake that held
all human knowledge, and in fact, aren’t pancakes
the way of life our Homeland Security protects?
I’d love to live on a pancake island topped by tropical fruit,
or in the mountains in a log cabin like the one on the label,
the air dazzled with powdered sugar.
Each evening I’d pull a pancake comforter up to my chin,
Every morning I would eat a stack of perfectly round poems,
and they would taste just like pancakes.
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An earlier version appeared in Rattle #38 (Winter 2012), p. 27
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That was “Pancakes” by Richard Krohn. Thanks for listening.
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Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
