Feeding Fashion

Another food poem in addition to the title-bearing poem in the collection by Jack Prelutsky A Pizza the Size of the Sun is the charming two stanza agricultural myth "Spaghetti Seeds" which concludes thusly

I planted them year ago . . .
that farmer is a phony.
I've not got one spaghetti tree—
just fields of macaroni.

A charming drawing by James Stevenson accompanies this little ditty which reminds me of Yankee Doodle and the feather ("Yankee Doodle went to town / A-riding on a pony, / Stuck a feather in his cap / And called it macaroni." It is the intertextual rhyme of pony and phony that cements the relation. Of course the Yankee Doodle macaroni is a statement of fashion not solely a pasta preference. There is an visual echo in the Stevenson illustration. The farmer's rake sticks out behind the figure like a feather in a hat.

But there is no mistaking the farmer for a fop.

And so for day 2295
26.03.2013