‘Butter’ is a poem dedicated to a very specific type of nostalgia. One that is rooted in the memory of delicious home-cooked meals and idiosyncratic palettes inherited by one’s parents. The speaker in Elizabeth Alexander’s poem focuses on just one ingredient — butter — which their mother apparently used in virtually every recipe. As a result, the poem overflows with visual and gustatory imagery that inspires both a heartwarming fondness for such memories and a whetted appetite.
Summary
‘Butter’ by Elizabeth Alexander reminisces over childhood memories that revolved around the speaker’s mother’s love of butter.
At its savory core, ‘Butter’ revolves around the speaker’s recollection of the way their mother’s habitual use of butter in many of the meals she cooked for her family. The reason for its consistent presence in every dish is explained as being owed to the matriarch’s singular love of butter. A fact that is underscored in the poem’s opening lines when the speaker describes how their mom used to eat it plain and by the stick.
Much of the poem then becomes a roll call of the different recipes in which butter was used and savored, with the speaker naming many of her favorites. At the end of this list, the speaker makes it clear that butter is synonymous with happy memories of them and their brother. They then allude to the children’s storybook “The Story of Little Black Sambo,” originally written by Helen Bannerman, envisioning themselves as the children of the main character’s parents and glowing as if made of butter.
Structure and Form
‘Butter’ is comprised of a single stanza of 25 lines written in free verse. It doesn’t possess a formal meter or rhyme, though it does use everything from internal rhymes and alliteration to repetition to create its own cadence. Alexander also uses both end-stopped lines and enjambment to accelerate the poem’s tempo.
Literary Devices
‘Butter’ uses a variety of literary devices, but for the most part, Alexander relies on vivid imagery that graces nearly all the senses. The ones present in the poem include but are not limited to:
- Alliteration: “My mother” (1); “butter better” (8); “grinning greasy” (19).
- Visual imagery: “butter better / than gravy staining white rice yellow / butter glazing corn in slipping squares” (8-10); “butter disappearing into / whipped sweet potatoes” (14-15).
- Kinesthetic imagery: “She pulls chunks off / the stick” (2-3); “cream spun around into butter” (4).
- Gustatory imagery: “eats it plain” (3); “we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon / and butter” (5-6); “butter licked off the plate / with warm Alaga syrup” (17-18).
- Metaphor: “butter melting in small pools in the hearts / of Yorkshire puddings” (7-8); “butter the lava in white volcanoes / of hominy grits” (11-12); “glowing from the inside / out, one hundred megawatts of butter” (24-25).
Detailed Analysis
Lines 1-4
My mother loves butter more than I do,
more than anyone. She pulls chunks off
the stick and eats it plain, explaining
cream spun around into butter! Growing up
The opening lines of ‘Butter’ establish the speaker’s mother as a devoted and passionate butter lover. The speaker says she loves it “more than I do, / more than anyone” (1-2). As if to drive their point home, they offer a compelling visual image as proof of that assertion, describing the way she “pulls chunks” (2) of butter right off the stick and “eats it plain” (3).
Ending on a gustatory image that recalls the savory creaminess of plain butter. As she does so, the speaker recalls how their mom would explain the process that creates butter via kinesthetic imagery: “Cream spun around into butter” (4), the speaker exclaims.
Lines 5-18
we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon
and butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,
butter melting in small pools in the hearts
of Yorkshire puddings, butter better
(…)
The middle section of ‘Butter’ unfolds as a cataloged list of all the dishes the speaker’s mother would create using butter. Here Alexander employs mouthwatering imagery that tantalizes a variety of the senses.
They describe with delectable detail through visual imagery how the “butter better / than gravy [stains] white rice yellow / butter glazing corn in slipping squares” (8-10). Or through gustatory imagery, which relishes in “turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon / and butter” (5-6) and the rich sweetness of “butter licked off the plate / with warm Alaga syrup” (17-18).
The speaker’s tone and diction also start to reveal a nostalgic reverence for the meals alongside an appetite for their flavor. One example of this is the description of the butter as “melting in small pools in the hearts / of Yorkshire puddings” (7-8).
The metaphor implies through the adjacent “butter” and “hearts” that the ingredient is emotionally essential to the speaker’s memories of enjoying home-cooked comfort food in their youth.
Lines 19-25
the good old days I am grinning greasy
with my brother, having watched the tiger
chase his tail and turn to butter. We are
(…)
‘Butter’ ends with the speaker reiterating the way butter reminds them of their childhood. Their nostalgia for these “good old days” (19) is rooted in the happiness that characterized them. A striking portrait of this joy is offered in a piece of visual and tactile imagery that envisions the speaker and their brother as “grinning greasy” (19) and presumably covered in butter.
The speaker also alludes to the parents in “The Story of Little Black Sambo” and their child, who returns home with enough butter for 169 pancakes. The implication is that butter was such an abundant staple of the speaker and their brother’s lives that they might as well have been “Mumbo and Jumbo’s children” (22).
Alexander ends the poem with an astonishing image as they emphasize the permeance of butter in the speaker’s childhood, implying they are made of butter themselves: “glowing from the inside / out, one hundred megawatts of butter” (24-25). The visual imagery of their luminescence symbolizes the rich radiance of the butter in both flavor and memory, while the decision to give it an electric quality only adds to the vibrant vivaciousness it inspires in the speaker.
FAQs
The poem’s theme centers on the speaker’s nostalgic savoring of their childhood and how it is rooted in the butter used by their mother. Alexander’s poem underscores the powerful sensory memory of taste and how certain flavors can inspire such emotion.
It is perhaps safe to assume that Elizabeth Alexander wrote the poem from personal experience and refers to her mother’s obsession with butter. The poet often wrote about her family and cultural experiences.
Butter, to the speaker, symbolizes a variety of things relating to their childhood. It is a sensory reminder of the delicious food their mother used to cook, as well as of their childhood home and brother. One that symbolizes the emotional and nostalgic comfort of home-cooked meals.
In “The Story of Little Black Sambo,” the main character finds themselves confronted by four tigers. To avoid getting eaten, the boy cleverly offers them his new clothes, shoes, and umbrella. This leads the tigers to vainly argue about who looks the best, and they start chasing one another around a tree. They move so quickly that they’re turned into ghee (clarified butter) which the boy collects and takes home to his parents. The speaker — being a young child when they heard the story — fixates solely on the striking image of tigers turning to butter.
Similar Poems
- ‘Chocolate Cake’ by Michael Rosen – this children’s poem describes the effects of dessert on a young child.
- ‘Ode to Tomatoes’ by Pablo Neruda – this poem is also an ode to a specific type of food and its placement within a salad.
- ‘Persimmons’ by Li-Young Lee – this poem uses the titular fruit to explore the speaker’s relationship with both language and family.
