Meal Hour in the Garden

Rae Bernadette’s book title Meal Hour in the Garden conjures a specific space, time, and action, meant to be shared with loved ones, whether in happenstance with strangers or countless repetitions with family. Rae sets these poems around the event that is eating, dining, delighting in food, for its everyday wonder, necessity, meditation, power to gather individuals, as a labor of love, and as a form of communication (transmission) of culture between people. From their creation to their consumption, Rae’s poems consider desires and our relationships with them. Rae tries to draw the borders of the self through words to understand where the self ends and the world begins. Their writing seeks to cross the infinite chasm that is consciousness out of an endless desire to be seen, felt, and understood. The major question of this book is how to feel, in relationship with our bodies and mental health, nature and its fruits, “Vessels of the mundane which add substance to life,” and most prominently, other people. Rae reflects on how their individual past affects (obstructs) their romantic capacity, and by extension, how our collective histories affect our ability to love and transform our relationships with the world. Many of these poems were written following a breakup, while struggling through work, and on the way to becoming an adult. They offer glimpses into intimacy, between bed sheets or in last love letters, in forlorn longing and forgiveness. In the process of processing—of being vulnerable and laying bare—Rae shows us the power of the stories we tell ourselves and how we make meaning. As food is essential to life, poetry is essential for living. It surrounds other essentials, becomes a part of us, creates a space for us to grow. -Excerpts from preface by Alex Zhu