Molly McCully Brown, “Kitchen Light” | Editorial Statement (Page 3)

• Brown identifies the kitchen as a space that feels “especially resonant as we enter Advent season.” How does this essay help you think about the kitchen in relationship to Advent? Are there other rooms, spaces, or places that feel particularly tied to Advent for you?

• In several pieces throughout the issue, Brown identifies the kitchen as a site of gratitude, abundance, and productive attention, but also as a possible site of shame, obligation, even loneliness. Where else do you see the kitchen characterized, in positive or negative ways, in these pages? What role has the space of the kitchen played in your own life?

Francis Spufford, “Chelsea Old Church” | Fiction 

• In this chapter, the “serene smell of food cooking” helps create a sense of hopeful expectation amid the shattering experience of war. What food images stand out to you in the excerpt? In what ways are your memories connected with the holidays and the smell of food? What feelings do these smells elicit?

• How do the Christmas carols sung in the old church deepen the meaning of this excerpt? Do any of these hymns resonate for you personally? If so, how?

Rachel Yoder, “Rewilding the Kitchen” | Interview

• Because we are so deeply polarized, Yoder says, “there’s just no arguing anyone into any other place…. Sometimes the only way in is through laughter.” Where have you seen laughter or absurdity as effective antidotes to polarization, in your life or in art?

• Yoder poses a question that is relevant for many of us: “Artists tend to be loners at times, and countercultural. So, how do you bring together a group of loners, people who are suspicious of groups, and how do you create durable institutions with and for them?” What do you think?

Paul Mariani, “Tantalus Redux,” and Lesley-Anne Evas, “Low Blood Sugar” | Poetry

• The speakers of both these poems narrate scenes related to food and desire. How do they invite you to think about hunger, longing, pleasure, or shame?

• “Low Blood Sugar” is written in first person, with a clear “I,” while “Tantalus Redux” is written in the second person, addressed to a “you.” How do these choices affect how you read the poems? How do you understand the “you” in Mariani’s poem?