Book excerpt: as some women love jewels, love the jewels of life "All the poems in this collection," Diane Wakoski writes, "describe the ongoing process of discovering beauty and acquiring an aesthetic sensibility via food"--seeing and savoring it, cooking and sharing it, reaching out to all creation and drawing it in, devouring it, lapping it up, literally becoming one with it. In the title poem, chosen by Adrienne Rich for inclusion in Best American Poetry, the poet recalls an early memory of delight in pure color--"Red stains on a clean white bib. . . crimson blood on canvas." Blood and crisp cotton as ink and paper, bread and wine as flesh and blood, the meal as art and as sacrament--this is the stuff of The Butcher's Apron, a feast for lovers of "the jewels of life."