Kitchen Heat

Poems

Fiction & Literature, Poetry
Cover of the book Kitchen Heat by Ava Leavell Haymon, LSU Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Ava Leavell Haymon ISBN: 9780807157633
Publisher: LSU Press Publication: September 1, 2006
Imprint: LSU Press Language: English
Author: Ava Leavell Haymon
ISBN: 9780807157633
Publisher: LSU Press
Publication: September 1, 2006
Imprint: LSU Press
Language: English

Kitchen Heat records in woman's language the charm and bite of domestic life. Ava Leavell Haymon's poems form a collection of Household Tales, unswerving and unsentimental, serving up the strenuous intimacies, children, meals, pets, roused memories, outrages, and solaces of marriage and family. Some of the poems are comic, such as "Conjugal Love Poem," about a wife who resists giving her husband the pity he seeks when complaining about a cold. Others find myth and fairy tale lived out in contemporary setting, with ironic result. Others rename the cast of characters: husband and wife become rhinoceros and ox; a carpool driver, the ominous figure Denmother.An elderly female is Old Grandmother, who creates time and granddaughters from oyster stew. The humidity of Deep South summers and steam from Louisiana recipes contribute to a simmering language, out of which people and images emerge and into which they dissolve again.
Denmother went to college in the 60s,
could pin your ears back at a cocktail party.
Her laugh had an edge to it,
and her yard was always cut.She grew twisted herbs in the flower beds,
hid them like weeks among dumpy marigolds.
The wolfsbane killed the pansies
before they bloomed much.She'd look at you real straight and talk
about nuclear power plants or abortion. At home
alone she boiled red potatoes all night
to make the primitive starch that holds up the clouds.
-- "Denmother's Conversation"

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Kitchen Heat records in woman's language the charm and bite of domestic life. Ava Leavell Haymon's poems form a collection of Household Tales, unswerving and unsentimental, serving up the strenuous intimacies, children, meals, pets, roused memories, outrages, and solaces of marriage and family. Some of the poems are comic, such as "Conjugal Love Poem," about a wife who resists giving her husband the pity he seeks when complaining about a cold. Others find myth and fairy tale lived out in contemporary setting, with ironic result. Others rename the cast of characters: husband and wife become rhinoceros and ox; a carpool driver, the ominous figure Denmother.An elderly female is Old Grandmother, who creates time and granddaughters from oyster stew. The humidity of Deep South summers and steam from Louisiana recipes contribute to a simmering language, out of which people and images emerge and into which they dissolve again.
Denmother went to college in the 60s,
could pin your ears back at a cocktail party.
Her laugh had an edge to it,
and her yard was always cut.She grew twisted herbs in the flower beds,
hid them like weeks among dumpy marigolds.
The wolfsbane killed the pansies
before they bloomed much.She'd look at you real straight and talk
about nuclear power plants or abortion. At home
alone she boiled red potatoes all night
to make the primitive starch that holds up the clouds.
-- "Denmother's Conversation"

More books from LSU Press

Cover of the book Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book The Keeper's Voice by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book Managing Hurricane Katrina by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book New Orleans Women and the Poydras Home by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book The View from Saturn by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book Discretionary Justice by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book Rationing Justice by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book Troubled Commemoration by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book Thomas Dixon Jr. and the Birth of Modern America by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book Across the Bloody Chasm by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book Inside the Carnival by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book Representing African Americans in Transatlantic Abolitionism and Blackface Minstrelsy by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book Milliken's Bend by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book My Life and An Era by Ava Leavell Haymon
Cover of the book Death in a Promised Land by Ava Leavell Haymon
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy