Appetite

The collection Appetite brings many kinds of appetites under its cover. Full of hungers, cravings, urges, nimble observations and taste for discoveries, Appetite reflects a sense of yearning, satisfied or unsatisfied, for different nourishments that are both earthly and spiritual. Some poems are oriented toward the organic world of foods, cooked or still raw as foods to become, some toward specific objects from our daily life such as a door, a pair of tweezers, a pillow, while some others mark the encounter with an artwork-Calder’s mobiles, Cornell’s boxes, or Cezanne’s card players.


As different as these poems may be, each encapsulates a small but durable moment of discovery. An inquisitive movement of desire inhabits the variety of these poems that the poet’s language crystallizes into a lingering and memorable experience.


The sensual feast is also linguistic feast. Like a good cook with carefully selected ingredients, the poet with discriminate taste makes the language concentrate its effects and invites the movement of the tongue to articulate each discovery with a subtle liaison of the concrete with the abstract, the sensual with the metaphysical, the appetite with its renewed satisfaction. Revealing the uncanny, secret life of things, these poems confer an aura of magic to objects that would otherwise be deemed ordinary. With a rare mix of humor and serenity Appetite reveals a world that has not yet lost its enchantment.

Black text stating Appetite poems by Jean-Mark Sens over a light pink background with the centered painting of a man holding up a mirror to a topless woman.

Jean-Mark Sens

Publication Date: March 1, 2004

Genre/Imprint: Poetry, Red Hen Press

$11.95 Tradepaper

Shop: Red Hen, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble

ISBN: 1-888996-98-6

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Reviews

The Hollins Critic reviews Appetite

Appetite Jean-Mark Sens. Red Hen (CDC, dist.), $11.95 (98p) ISBN 1-888996-98-6 Jean-Mark Sens serves us a world that we thought we knew. Each of Sens’ lines twists the lens of […]