All her life, it seems as she looks back, writer and poet Maya

Angelou has had an enviably acute awareness of food and cooking

as a dimension of experience.

Her new book, "Hallelujah! The Welcome Table" (Random

House, $29.95), makes clear the links she remembers between certain

tastes, dishes and meals, and the intense emotions of the unforgettable

occasions that were their context.

The book, subtitled "A Lifetime of Memories With Recipes," is

much more than a cookbook - but it's that too, the

recipes paired with the perceptive vignettes, sometimes funny,

sometimes touching, that themselves are a feast.

"I've long known that food features in our lives so

much more dominantly than we realize," Angelou said in a

recent interview, on a visit to New York. "Food can be used

to pacify, to enrage, to court, to uplift."

Later that day at a book signing, she reminded her laughing

bookstore audience that food can be used to woo - "When

a person says 'I want to take you to dinner,' it's

not always about dinner."

Angelou, 76, lives in Winston-Salem, N.C. Her book takes readers