Blog | The Taste of Home (A Short Poem)
- 2 minsPoetry has always been my favourite form of written work to read or analyze, both in and out of the classroom. I will never cease to be amazed at the sheer amount of information and intention that can be condensed in a medium best known for being short and succinct. I think my love of poetry can be traced back to when I had read my first ever Wilfred Owen poem in a high school English class. I have never been particularly interested in the first World War, or in any type of war history, but reading Owen’s poems brought me a level of understanding and interest that I had never expected to find. His poetry does not simply retell his account of the war- they speak of the emotional journey that his mind had travelled, and of the thoughts and feelings so unique and individual that they could only have been told in words if by his own hand. I too, wanted to write poems that only I could write, telling stories that only I could tell; I didn’t think there was a better way to do so than to start by going back to my roots, to the home that had had the most impact in shaping me to be the person I am today.
Food has always been such a big part of my family life, and I wanted to bring the essence of the warmth and love that I’ve always associated with it into a poem. I moved away from home to attend university three years ago (it feels like an entire lifetime has passed by since I moved to Seattle), and I still haven’t gotten used to not being able to eat my mother’s home-cooked meals. Burgers and pizzas and chicken noodle soup could never truly be comfort food to me- the closest I can get to finding solace in food here is in the little takeout boxes of Americanized Chinese food (that could still never compare to a home-cooked meal). I wanted to share a taste of my mother’s Taiwanese cooking with everyone in this poem, and at the same time convey both the physical and emotional distance I sometimes feel between the “American” college life I live at school and the traditional Taiwanese life I lived at home.
Amber Hsu
Senior studying English and Biochemistry at the UW