Alimentum – December 2013

Alimentum, a food journal, transitioned a little more than a year ago from a print biannual publication to an online monthly. Because it is now more frequent, it is unfortunately a bit smaller. There is one piece for each of the sections each month: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, featurettes, book reviews, recipe poems, eat and greet, art gallery, jukebox, food blog favs, and news.

Alimentum, a food journal, transitioned a little more than a year ago from a print biannual publication to an online monthly. Because it is now more frequent, it is unfortunately a bit smaller. There is one piece for each of the sections each month: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, featurettes, book reviews, recipe poems, eat and greet, art gallery, jukebox, food blog favs, and news.

The fiction piece by Lois Marie Harrod, “Garlicky Greens,” is actually about another character that writes food poetry. Michelle’s latest project is writing about Grandma Rosa and cooking. And Amy Halloran’s nonfiction piece is actually about another writer, as well, Kate Lebo—author of the hand-sewn zine, soon to be a full-length book, A Commonplace Book of Pie. The piece addresses Lebo’s work and writing with pie:

“My whole point has been, for baking and for writing, to look at pie as a practice,” [Lebo] told me. “You practice piano, yoga, or even religion. It’s something I go to over and over and over. It’s part of what keeps me sane. Part of what keeps me connected to the things that give me pleasure and the things that make me me.”

Lois Rosen’s poem “Nonpareil”, though, will start up your taste buds more than the pie: “she baked chocolate mandelbrot / and noodle kugel with cinnamon / golden raisins and sour cream.” The poem compares eating at a restaurant (“The salmon piece smaller / than my palm / . . . but left me hungry”) to visiting Aunt Henny’s where she says it is impossible to leave hungry.

Eva Szabo’s recipe poem “Strudel: The Pastry of My Dreams” will make you drool: “each layer / a flake, quite / dream-like . . .”). I perhaps wonder if the repetition due to the sestina form is quite working for the piece, but then I see that form may follow function as the sections of the poem (“lightly / layered”) mirror the layers of the strudel (“It should be crisp / and sort of / translucent like cold”).

And in the featurette section, the video quality isn’t fantastic since it is filmed during an arts festival, but you’ll definitely want to check it out. Living cultures of bacteria and yeast work to make musical composition in “Fermentophone” by Joshua Pablo Rosenstock.

And although there may not be a ton of new content each month, it’s easy enough to use the right hand column in each section to read more poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from previous issues. If you’re new to the journal, I’d suggest navigating further in, filling the belly and mind with more tastes.
[www.alimentumjournal.com]