The Salad Bowl Called Literature

Salad. When someone says salad, different things come to mind: macaroni, Caesar or fruit salad. One thing though, is common: a salad is a mixture of ingredients.

I see literature as a salad bowl. It is a mixture of the writer’s thoughts and experiences combined with images and flowery words. In salad parlance, thoughts and experiences are the macaroni pasta and the fruits; flowery words are the dressings or the cream, which add flavour, so to speak.

I have said that the cream is the imagery and the flowery words. The cream is a requirement for the macaroni salad, is it not? One can’t call a salad a macaroni salad without the cream. Same with literature. There has to be an image use, one that “conceals” the message. After all, that is the beauty of literature. “One Arm,” for instance, uses the arm as a symbol of a woman giving herself to a man.

With respect to form—especially in poetry—I keep an open mind. I do not believe that a poem has to have a fixed rhyme and metre. Putting rhyme and metre on the poem is the writer’s business. If he wants to go traditional, fine by me. If not, so be it. Going back to macaroni salad, it’s like not including corn in the mixture because you do not want to. But the salad is still a salad.

I believe too, that a literary piece has to have something unique. Resil Mojares’ “Ark” for example, teaches the reader to be a keen observant. This is for prose, though. Because after I read a story, I always ask, “Now what?” I look for something new in that story, something that could help a budding writer like myself. It is from Sinai Hamada’s “Tanabata’s Wife” that I learned the events in the story reflect the character’s personality. Or that the dead-end street in James Joyce’s “Araby” is the symbol of innocence.

Literature has its “prescribed” characteristic—imagery. The others—rhyme, metre, once-upon-a-time opening—can be played with or ignored. Some would contest these, and stick to tradition or claim that I am a little old-fashioned. My reply: take a look. Literature is a salad bowl.