Butter

In Alexander’s poem, butter is everywhere in abundance. The poem begins with the announcement that the speaker’s mother relishes butter. When the mother explains to her children how it’s made, she indicates by the exclamation point at the end of her statement that it’s a kind of fairytale miracle, like hay “spun” (Line 4) to gold. Alexander was born in 1962. It is more than feasible that her mother—as well as the speaker’s mother—was a child of the Great Depression. Butter would have been a luxury in her mother’s childhood, even if she were raised in relative affluence. Good things were scarce. Butter flows like tap water in the speaker’s childhood. Extravagance, then, is a gesture of victory over scarcity.

The speaker absorbs all this abundance as her right. Butter is the substance of her childhood, creamy and “curdy” (Line 16), “better / than gravy” (Lines 8-9). In the referenced children’s story, butter is the byproduct of the tigers having spent themselves and their fury. Butter was the reward for having survived—for being clever enough to survive the dangers and aggressions of the world.

Although the speaker’s childhood, as seen through the lens of buttery food, seems happy and free of strife—the speaker says, “I picture / the good old days” (Lines 18-19)—there is tension in the statement “We are / Mumbo and Jumbo’s children” (Lines 21-22). The children in the poem, happily eating pancakes, are yet subject to racial stereotyping and its adherent violence. Still, there is food and butter in abundance, and parents who love, and children “glowing” (Line 24) from that food and love.

As with any artist in relation to their work, a poet—even a living one—cannot account for every interpretation of her work. For example, there is no reason to assume that Alexander, who published “Butter” in 1996, would foresee the saturation of whole categories of comestibles and goods with corn products, or that the poet was particularly concerned with commodity crops and monoculture in American agriculture. However, the presence of so much corn in “Butter” indicates that corn represents a significant presence in the American foodscape. In this light, though, “slipping squares” (Line 10) of butter resemble the large, parcels of cultivated land one sees from an airplane flying over Nebraska; land that, from the overproduction of corn, is being slipped of its soil from crop fatigue.

Corn is sweet, delicious, and versatile. Shucked, it’s an American summer staple; it’s popcorn at the movies; it’s cornbread fried in a cast-iron pan and broken into baked beans. It’s also used to feed millions of livestock, converted into ethanol, and present in products as unlikely as makeup, toothpaste, and diapers. The omnipresence of corn is akin to the addition of sugar to so many American pantry items, including canned vegetables, potato chips, and hot dogs. In Alexander’s “Butter,” the volcano of grits on the table is the tip of the proverbial iceberg.