I've always enjoyed Neruda's Elemental Odes, which contain many Odes to
(say) a Tomato.
I've also been reading with enormous enjoyment Gerard's Herbal, which if
not strictly poetry, is surely poetic in many places, and was probably a
book Shakespeare used or was aware of. John Gerard was an Elizabethan
physician, and a famous gardener: and his Herbal is surely one of the
most charming books ever written. He warns against what I presume are
peppers, which he calls Madde Apples; even if "The people of Toledo eat
them with great devotion, being boiled with fat flesh, putting to it some
scraped cheese, which they do keep in vinegar, hony or salt pickle all
winter", he says that "But I rather wish English men to content
themselves with the meat and sauce of our owne country, than with fruit
and sauce eaten with such perill; for doubtlesse these Apples have a
mischievous qualitie, the use whereof if utterly to bee forsaken."
So be warned!
Alison
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