Ode To The Mango
Jason Chiu-Skow
Oh Mango,
Solid,
Withstanding,
Life-giving nut.
Born long ago
The core of your being
Transforming, growing.
From a single tree --
a whole orchard grows --.
a miracle.
4,000 years.
from the ground
You sprouted.
Enduring,
A million-mile marathon.
You grew
Spread
And conquered the world
With your flavor.
Your bright
Golden flesh,
A shrine to the gods
Seems to call
For a greater purpose.
You are not a potato --
plain, boring, simple.
Nor are you an apple --
common and basic.
You provide more.
Lowered down from up above
Fruit of the sun
otherworldly.
You hang down
From your branches up above
Lowering yourself.
The fruit of the deserving.
A stand-alone champion.
Completely worthy
In all of its praise.
Your skin
proclaims your history proudly.
Green
Yellow
Red.
You may be the sweetest of fruits,
Soft insides plump with juice.
Or as sour as citrus,
Bitter, hard, and unforgiving.
Thesis: In my poem “Ode To The Mango”, I used metaphors, enjambment, and personification similar to how Elizabeth Acevedo did in With the Fire on High and Pablo Neruda in his “Ode to Salt” to give the reader a sense of the mango’s history and how its unique taste and texture made it popular around the world.
In my poem, I used personification to introduce how widespread mangoes are in agriculture and foods world-wide. I compared mangoes to runners in a race, “Enduring, A million-mile marathon” (Chiu-Skow). This comparison gives the reader a comprehensible understanding and perspective of how far the mango fruit has traveled across the world, which I want to reinforce its long history and reverence by civilizations. This reinforces my poem’s purpose of stressing the mangoes’ history and humble origins, to its widespread cultivation worldwide. In addition to personification, I used enjambment to stress the importance of the Mango’s aspects. I framed mangoes as the food for higher beings, stressing it was “The fruit of the deserving. A stand-alone champion. Completely worthy in all of its praise” (Chiu-Skow). These separated lines reinforce the mango’s taste and appeal even by itself. This pushes my goal of promoting mangoes as an important food even by itself. Likewise, in “Ode to Salt”, Neruda uses personification to stress salt’s influence on humanity. He describes its origins from the mines and the ocean, to its being “on every table in the world, salt, we see your piquant powder sprinkling vital light upon our food” (Neruda). The salt’s description as an enhancer to food also reinforces its importance, and makes previous reference to its origin. Similarly in With the Fire on High, the main character and chef, Emoni, finds it hard to conform to other people’s measurements. When asked questions on her dish by the chef, she says she “hadn’t paid attention to the temperature portion of the study guide...Chicken is done when it’s done” (Acevedo 89). Acevedo uses Emoni’s disdain for quantitative evidence to tell her when the chicken is done, like how in my poem, I describe mangoes as worthy of themselves, and therefore not needing validation of their greatness.