Rozanne Gold is an award-winning chef, food writer, journalist, and end-of-life doula. After four decades living at the intersection of “the culinary and the literary,” she now delves into the world of spiritual nourishment. Poet Annie Finch calls her a “geographer of women’s souls.” The author of thirteen acclaimed cookbooks, she has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Bon Appetit, among other publications. She is a four-time winner of the James Beard Award, and a finalist of the 2020 Sappho Poetry Prize. Ms. Gold has an MFA from the New School for Social Research, and is on the board of Brooklyn Poets. Mother Sauce is her first poetry collection. Visit her at www.rozannegold.com.
Praise for Mother Sauce:
This book was created by a singular poet—death doula, legendary chef, geographer of women's souls—who writes with a memorable voice. Gold's spare version of magical realism leaves no syllable unturned. Deft, wise, and delicate, the poems of Mother Sauce are powerful recipes for wisdom and compassion.
Annie Finch, author of “Spells” and “A Poet’s Craft”
With a chef’s touch Rozanne Gold’s debut chapbook exquisitely gathers memory, loss, and boundless love into a redolent bouquet garni. Gold is at once and by turns our guide, our charge, and our doula, leading us through grief and love, states of being -- arranged together through the sensorial necessity of food. With a keen eye for lush detail and an epic sweep, Gold offers process, where a recipe holds the future, where we grow memories older than water. Step into this kitchen. There is nourishment here.
Robert Balun, author of “Acid Western” and “Traces”
These spare, deceptively simple poems tease the senses, excavating bliss and loss in equal measure. Deftly exploring divinity, family, and ancestral community, Gold grapples with what it means to be motherless and childless, to center one's life on creating communion. Throughout this gorgeous collection, "She thinks about the connection between tending to and being tender and bows down before her verdant altar." Her work offers an unexpected feast after deep grief -- "taffy-wrapped heartache" followed by "breasts large ripe halved and seeded." She reminds us that "salt makes sweet things sweeter." Mother Sauce is spiritual nourishment.
Barbara Schwartz, author of “Any Thriving Root” and co-author of “Nothing but Light”
Mother Sauce is nourishment for the heart and soul. Exploring loss and joy through motherhood and motherlessness, these poems entice the reader into a feast of contemplation and experience. We are served a savory and well-balanced meal ranging from ‘how to grieve’ to ‘how to peel a carrot.’ From the imaginative leap of the first poem— where ‘God as cook creates the Mother Sauces’ — the culinary serves spiritual inquiry, seasoned with everything from razzmatazz to gravitas. A warm invitation to join the hearth where the Mother Sauce nourishes all her daughters, we become both witness and participant in “How to get fed?” to women carrying women/home.” This is an offering to be savored, celebrated, and long-remembered.
Krista Leahy, co-author of “Nothing but Light”