The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica

Fiction | Poem | YA | Published in 1993

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Sense Imagery

Sense Imagery describes a poet’s ability to recreate sounds, smells, sights, textures, and tastes for the reader. In “The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica,” Cofer uses images so readers can experience the store with all five senses.

Visual images fill the poem, from the “dried codfish” (Line 5) in a bin to the Bustelo coffee to the “Suspiros” (Line 27) on the shelf in this crowded store. Cofer draws the reader’s attention to specific foods and objects to convey the deli’s wealth of goods from Latin American countries. Further, the poet describes the store owner herself, with her warm smile, “plain wide face” (Line 20), and “ample bosom / resting on her plump arms […]” (Lines 20-21). Her motherly appearance adds to the store’s welcoming atmosphere.

The food items throughout the store provide gustatory (taste), olfactory (smell), tactile (touch or texture), and visual imagery to the poem. Cofer identifies “the heady mix of smells” (Line 4) inside, with cod and plantain smells combining with the scents of coffee, sandwich ingredients, and other untold items. Readers may imagine the salty flavor of the cod, the sweetness of the plantains, the sugary meringues, or the savory jamón y queso as Cofer names them. Tactile imagery includes the wax paper on the sandwich and the word Cofer uses for the Suspiros, “stale” (Line 28), which evokes chewing on a too-hard meringue candy.

Aural images, or sounds, also fill the store as people visit the woman and speak in Spanish to each other throughout the day. Cofer captures the sounds of customers’ voices several times. She quotes Cubans, who predict “a ‘glorious return’ to Havana” (Line 14), and Mexicans referencing “dólares” (Line 17) they hope to earn. Others talk to themselves from the deli’s aisles.

Metaphor

Metaphors compare unlike objects or ideas without words such as like or as. Judith Ortiz Cofer’s first metaphor compares the Latin deli’s food with customers’ thoughts of the past: “canned memories” (Line 9). Since canned products last longer than fresh foods, the word canned implies that the woman preserves her customers’ connections to their native countries through the products she sells.

Other metaphors center on the woman herself. The speaker references “the family portrait / of her plain wide face […]” (Lines 19-20). The deli owner’s face reminds her customers of their mothers, grandmothers, and sisters, which encourages them to visit often and linger in the store.

The poem ends by equating customers’ homelands and “closed ports she must trade with” (Line 38). Whether Cuba, Mexico, or Puerto Rico, these places are ports where patrons won’t return, though they long to do so. The deli owner selects her store’s products to appeal to her customers’ homesickness. It is as if she is doing business with a country that doesn’t send or receive goods (or closed port), since the memory of a place can’t trade as an actual port could.

Simile

Similes are kinds of metaphors that use like or as to draw their comparisons. In the first stanza, the speaker describes “the green plantains / hanging in stalks like votive offerings” (Lines 5-6). Votive offerings are items someone gives to a deity as a token of thanks or to accompany a prayer request. This reference emphasizes the deli owner’s almost religious function in her community, creating a place of worship for her customers.

In the second stanza, Cofer describes the customers “reading the labels of packages aloud, as if / they were the names of lost lovers: Suspiros, / Merengues” (Lines 27-28). The words on packaging evoke the same bittersweet feeling as it would to speak of an ex. These food products remind customers of beloved homelands they may never see again.

Finally, the elderly gentlemen in the final stanza offers the woman “lists of items / that he reads to her like poetry […]” (Lines 34-35). The poet compares a shopping list with a poem: a collection of specific, meaningful words that evoke strong feelings.

Sound Devices

Although “The Latin Deli” does not feature overt rhyme or regular rhythm, it does use subtle alliteration, assonance, and consonance to create musicality throughout. From the first line, “Presiding over a formica counter,” (Line 1) readers can hear the assonance of the long I sound in presiding and formica, in addition to the consonance of K and R sounds in “formica counter.”

Spanish phrases also enhance the poem’s resonance when read aloud. The phrase “talking lyrically / of dólares to be made in El Norte—” (Lines 16-17) contains lilting consonance with the L sounds in talking, lyrically, dólares, and el. Alliteration occurs in “spoken Spanish” (Line 19) and “lost lovers” (Line 27) as well. Further, the poet underlines the final line’s haunting qualities with the assonance of long O sounds in “closed ports” (Line 38).