The Joy of Cooking- Elaine Magarrell

"The Joy of Cooking"
Elaine Magarrell

This poem was, by far, the most interesting poem in this unit because of its somewhat unusual imagery and symbolism.  The tone of this poem was amusing and disgusting simultaneously with its gross diction combined with exaggerations that are just funny.  Obviously, the narrator did not actually cut out her sister's tongue to prepare, but she probably just has a problem with what her sisters says with her tongue.  Similarly, she did not really slow cook her brother's heart--she probably just did not like his morals or what he had done with his life.  This is evident in lines 15 and 16 when she wrote "Although beef heart serves six my brother's heart barely feeds two" (Magarrell, line 15-16).  That part was really good because it offers her opinion of her brother's behavior and sarcastically characterizes him.  She ends both stanzas with phrases that suggest she could have done more to their respective body parts, but she for some reason refrained.  I think that because she included those two phrases, she does not totally hate her sister and brother, but also does not approve of their actions/words.  To answer number three in the book, the speaker's personality was described a lot, although this poem was only 18 lines long.  She seems very sarcastic and overly intense in her descriptions of her brother and sister.  I feel that she thinks herself better than them because she is the one physically [well, figuratively] cooking her sister's tongue and her brother's heart.