Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet: Essays and Interviews

In Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, poet Adrienne Su reflects
on her journey as a creative writer and avid home cook, beginning at a
neighbor's dinner table in 1980s Atlanta, lingering over poems, poets, and
connections between food and literature, and ending in her 2023 kitchen in
central Pennsylvania. In essays and interviews, Su contemplates her own use of food
as a recurring metaphor, influential teachers and peers, the push and pull
between cooking and writing, changing expectations around English usage, and
craft questions such as: Why does some subject matter refuse to cooperate in
the creative process, even when it appears close to home? How does one write a
good poem about being happy? Why write in rhyme when it's time-consuming and
mostly out of style? What is a poem's responsibility to the literal truth?

These essays are driven by the tensions between worlds that
overlap and collide: social conventions of the northern and southern United
States; notions of what's American and what's Asian American; the demands of the
page and the demands of the home; the solitariness of writing and the
meaningful connection a poem can create between writer and reader. In
interviews, often with fellow poets, Su discusses a range of topics, from her
early days in the Nuyorican poetry-slam scene to the solace of poetry and cooking
during Covid-19 lockdown.

While Su's previous books are all collections of poetry, she
has been publishing individual essays for many years. Hot, Sour, Salty,
Sweet gathers the best of them into one volume for the first time.