HOW TO BAKE A GINGERBREAD GIRL\u00a0\u00a0 by Emma Simon<\/p>\n
Paint blue icing on her fingertips,
\nfingers that could snap with cold,<\/p>\n
dipped into fridges and glass chillers
\nplacing cockleshell cakes in pretty rows.<\/p>\n
Tie back her hair, dress her in sexless tabards,
\ndab with jam. Press glac\u00e9 cherries on her cheeks<\/p>\n
when delivery men proffer French stick bouquets
\nwith winked asides about what\u2019s just risen and<\/p>\n
is fresh enough to eat. Make her strong:
\nby fifteen she\u2019ll haul a tray of farmhouse loaves,<\/p>\n
guide bread through slicers without alarm.
\nLet Saturdays fly from the shelves<\/p>\n
in a blitz of crumbs, the dirty grit of sugar.
\nKnead into her the 28 times table,<\/p>\n
that baker\u2019s trick of twisting a paper bag closed
\nso it holds intact delicate layers of hope.<\/p>\n
Leave her to prove herself on moonlit mornings,
\nDecember nosed to the window,<\/p>\n
side-by-side with other gingerbread girls,
\ntea cupped in frosted hands, backs to the warming oven.<\/p>\n
There aren\u2019t enough poems set at a workplace.\u00a0 That\u2019s one aspect of this poem\u2019s appeal \u2013 we\u2019re put right there in the bakery, hauling bread or doing mental arithmetic, getting warm after winter\u2019s early starts or arranging cakes in the chiller.\u00a0 All this sweet stuff is hard work, vividly described in just 20 lines.\u00a0 Not that we know where we are at the beginning; though line 2 gives a clue with those snappable fingers, it\u2019s not until the second verse that the gingerbread girl comes to life like a statue in a fairy-tale.\u00a0 The metaphor\u2019s well maintained and used to suggest that the girl (and she really is a girl, barely in her mid-teens) is maturing, \u201cleave her to prove herself\u201d, doing that teenage thing of waiting to become grown-up though time (those Saturdays) is flying.<\/p>\n
Jobs help you learn about life.\u00a0 The gingerbread girl is on show in the shop despite the \u201csexless tabard\u201d; she\u2019s also becoming competent at maintaining the show of the shop. \u00a0Beyond the blush we\u2019re not told how she feels about the delivery men\u2019s phallic jokes, whether she finds them utterly obnoxious or mildly embarrassing, or perhaps it depends on which delivery man\u2019s doing the joking.\u00a0 We\u2019re left to imagine these possibilities.<\/p>\n
The poem\u2019s very loosely presented as a recipe and the couplets work for that, giving the impression of a list of instructions. The imperative tense adds freshness of perspective to what could have been a straightforward, less striking autobiographical poem.<\/p>\n
Let Saturdays fly from the shelves<\/p>\n
in a blitz of crumbs, the dirty grit of sugar.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the hard work and speed of a Saturday evoked in few words.\u00a0 The short i’s of \u201cin a blitz\u2026 grit\u201d suggest the scattering of the day\u2019s detritus.\u00a0 (More short i’s appear, icily, in line three of the poem.)\u00a0 Then there\u2019s this:<\/p>\n
that baker\u2019s trick of twisting a paper bag closed
\nso it holds intact delicate layers of hope.<\/p>\n
Those two lines have to be said slowly out loud.\u00a0 The first one\u2019s almost a tongue-twister with \u201ctrick of twisting\u201d and \u201cbaker\u2019s\u2026 paper bag\u201d.\u00a0 In the second, the strong caesura at \u201cintact | delicate\u201d and the precise sound of the t\u2019s and c\u2019s convey the airiness of the cakes, the bags and hope.\u00a0 The long o\u2019s in \u201cclosed\u2026 holds\u2026 hope\u201d bind the couplet together.\u00a0 Such effects suggest a good instinctive ear for language.\u00a0 Line breaks are nicely judged, going mostly with the sense except for the joke in verses 4-5.<\/p>\n
The final couplet broadens the perspective, perhaps with a hint of nostalgia \u2013 the poem becomes universal when the gingerbread girl becomes plural, all of them proving as they enjoy the warmth of oven and tea.<\/p>\n
Photo: Joe’s Bakery, Bristol HOW TO BAKE A GINGERBREAD GIRL\u00a0\u00a0 by Emma Simon Paint blue icing on her fingertips, fingers that could snap with cold, dipped into fridges and glass chillers placing cockleshell cakes in pretty rows. Tie back her hair, dress her in sexless tabards, dab with jam. Press glac\u00e9 cherries on her cheeks when delivery men proffer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":6140,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6137"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6157,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6137\/revisions\/6157"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFiona Moore<\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"