Poet's Choice

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By ROBERT PINSKY

Sunday, November 18, 2007

The ceremonious gathering to eat sumptuous food is a basic ritual, involving memory and family or communal ties. The holiday of Thanksgiving in that sense is primal, as well as American. Mark Strand's New Selected Poems includes an evocation of food's deep meanings, appropriate to the holiday, though the dish is not turkey:

Pot Roast

I gaze upon the roast,

that is sliced and laid out

on my plate,

and over it

I spoon the juices

of carrot and onion.

And for once I do not regret

the passage of time.

I sit by a window

that looks

on the soot-stained brick of buildings

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