| This poetry collection's title and organizational scheme are the conflation of two ideas: the draft of the collection, organized according to the order of a Lutheran worship service, titled Our House of Cards' Worship Hour, and Brian Bedard's suggested scheme, titled Eating Lightning, in which a four-course meal functions as a metaphor for the speaker-poet's artistic metamorphosis. Thus the table of contents, while suggestive of a menu, also suggests the program of a worship service. Accordingly, the overarching metaphor of Indelicatessen is that of a progressive dinner, or dim sum, in which poems may be consumed inside the delicatessen, carried out, picked up at the drive-through, or delivered. These four sections are subtitled: Grace to Receive the Word, Service of the Word, Transubstantiation, and Grace to Impart the Word. The poems have been grouped, respectively, to develop thematic threads of: the Word as Itself, Women and Sisterhood, the Word Made Flesh, and the Speaker-Poet. Finally, the title, a portmanteau of indelicate and delicatessen , is to suggest dialectic couplings of tastelessness and connoisseurship, impropriety and decorum, conurbation and hinterland, parvenu and forever burgher. |
