If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

The line hinges on a reversible metaphor: if we commonly praise food as “poetry” (sensuous, artful, transporting), then poetry can be understood as a kind of nourishment in its own right. The rhetorical question collapses the boundary between bodily appetite and aesthetic or spiritual hunger, suggesting that art feeds the inner life the way meals feed the body. It also implies reciprocity between maker and consumer: cooking and writing both transform raw materials into forms that sustain, comfort, and shape identity. The quote’s compactness invites readers to treat reading not as luxury but as a necessity—something ingested, metabolized, and lived with.