Bread Soup

The poem Bread Soup by Bill Holm produced mixed emotions for me. I must admit that upon first reading it, I found it rather bland (no pun intended), yet parts of it have slowly grown on me. Initially I saw it as being far too simple. I felt that one could simply look up the ingredients for an Old Icelandic bread soup recipe, and he or she could write this poem. In truth, part of me still feels that way, yet the last four lines truly save this poem in my eyes. This is because for the most part this poem is producing an image; it begins with the bread, and then goes to letting it soak in raisins and lemon slices, then the image of it being molasses, lastly the white whipped cream. And these images are very solid, because they are images which have very concrete colors attached to them: lemon- yellow, bowl-white, bread- brown, sugar-white etc. But as previously stated they are very simple to produce, anyone can simply look up a recipe, write it down and call it poetry. But not just anyone can produce those last four lines and tie them so ingeniously to the whole idea surrounding this poem. Holm has taken the tradition of his people (I assume) and has brought it to life through his poetry. He describes what process of eating and making bread soup does for him. Had he simply listed ingredients this poem would have been boring, but he chose to break each detail down further “ boil until it is a thick as molasses” or “ Ladle.. whipped cream to melt in its brown belly,” are both great examples of this. Then by stating “the soup is alive as any animal and the yeast will sing inside you after eating,” he is describing the personal pleasures the bread soup has brought him, and the potential pleasures the reader could receive if he/she chose to follow his instructions.
Daniel Pilla