Aviya Kushner is the Contributing Editor in Poetry at BarnesandNoble.com and the Poetry Editor o/Neworld Magazine. She is a graduate of the acclaimed creative writing program in poetry atBoston University, where she received the Fitzgerald Award in Translation. Her writing on poetry has appeared in Harvard Review and The Boston Phoenix, and she has served as Poetry Coordinator for AGNI Magazine. She has given readings of her own work throughout the United States, and she teaches atMassachusettsCommunications College in Boston. In the following essay, Kushner discusses the sensory qualities of the poem.

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mark Strand is known for both his love of language and his love of food. An outstanding cook and a colorful conversationalist, he often uses culinary references in his attempts to explain the uncontrollable urge to write and perfect a poem. Food, like language, has texture, color, and weight. In...