Welcome to my blog, where I take pleasure in words and pictures, be they my own or those of others. I'm a creative individual, and the crafty side I explore on my 'other blog', Picking Up The Threads, which I hope you'll visit too. I'm sure you understand that I have sole copyright of my original work and any of my contributions, so please ask if you want to use them. A polite request is rarely refused. So, as they used to say on the BBC's 'Listen With Mother' radio programme, many years ago: "Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin."

Sunday 31 March 2013

Kitchen Nightmares



Yerka Yacek. Between Heaven and Hell

This was going to be a tough one,
The place was alive with allegories,
A miasma of metaphors,
Where the artist had dipped his brush
in his soul, and drawn an analogy.

The similes were stacked as high,
As an elephant’s eye,
There was a suspension of disbelief 
on the table, and enjambment oozed 
from broken jars. A caesura put a stop to that.

Every surface was crawling with hyperbole,
Could he clear the clutter of rhetoric?
Gain a victory for verisimilitude?
He rolled up his sleeves, kicked the cat,
and swore to conquer Hell’s Kitchen.

©Marilyn Brindley

Kitchen Nightmares and Hell's Kitchen are of course, both T.V. programmes, shown in the U.K. and The U.S.A. The star was Gordon Ramsay, who would think nothing of swearing and 'kicking the cat' (1) to achieve a result. My nephew's newly acquired restaurant was the subject of a programme in the first series of Kitchen Nightmares; Gordon came in and acted as troubleshooter for my nephew and his partner. It was great entertainment and Gordon, by all accounts was a thoroughly nice guy. He hardly swore at all!

Tess Kincaid at The Mag gave us the picture as a prompt, and this was my response. Why not venture over there and see what other hellish scenes (or heavenly delights) it conjured up for other poets and writers. Or perhaps they found something in between the two.
"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul,
and paints his own nature into his pictures."

Henry Ward Beecher

18 comments:

  1. Allegories and metaphors and analogies - similes and hyperbole and verisimilitude ~~~ OH MY!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm with Helen! Oh my is right!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Totally brilliant poet's Mag! :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. The image speaks for the poet....or the poet speaks in images.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That kitchen is where Hell is for me! Great stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Great poem! And how cool to have Ramsay's help for your nephew! My hubby never misses a show - repeats or not!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Cleverly concocted and served in style. My compliments to the chef!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Very active response- pinch the cat I say- clear the counters indeed! thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Very clever connection to something familiar on TV! Nicely Nell!

    Hank

    ReplyDelete
  10. Yup, that keeps everyone on their toes.

    Where the artist had dipped his brush
    in his soul, and drawn an analogy.

    Love it.

    ReplyDelete
  11. A recipe to my taste...what would Julia say?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Your right Nell , there is a lot going on , but i think you enscapulated it nicely . It reminds me of the flight deck of an interstellar space ship , lodged deep in some wormhole in hyper space during a voyage lasting many generations . Cheers

    ReplyDelete
  13. Please pass the linguistic Alfredo and the fig(urative) jam!

    ReplyDelete
  14. A veritable hotbed of poetic artistical! Love it...

    ReplyDelete
  15. Loved all of the creative references to writing in this. A whole lot of mixed verbiage being whipped up in this kitchen, I think! Very cleverly penned. Nice to see where the inspiration took you this week!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Love that oozing enjambment...

    ReplyDelete
  17. Oh my the lexicon used - leaves me little 'Aussie' housewife quaking in her moccasins!

    Wonderful!

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.