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Kitchen Heat: Poems
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 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"
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"
- GenresPoetry
120 pages, Paperback
First published August 7, 2006
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 28, 2023
The table for shucking oysters was set up
under the Possum oak that shaded the kitchen.
A black pot sat inside on the Chambers stove,
waiting. Company was already on its way.
I never saw my grandmother
come outside, but she was always there
in time, radiating the faint impatience
a good priest uses to propel the liturgy.
Her acolyte Calvin jimmied the first shell,
gouging at the hinge as though he had to relearn
the art. He held the open half out to her,
keeping his eyes away, outside the patch of shade.
The rudely exposed oyster swam
in a dimming nacre, the unformed palm
of an embryo—more phlegm than flesh.
She put the transparent thing in her mouth.
The sun stopped in its painful crawl
across the sky, dusty sumac leaves hung
motionless, the horses’ tails did not flick.
Once I had to close my eyes.
Then she nodded
and went back inside,
the screen door shrieking open
and banging twice at her heels.
Relief leaked over us all:
the sun let out its breath, resumed
its importance and its path
down the scalded sky.
They still alive, Calvin would say
to no one in particular, ignoring
my slack face, and he and my uncle
would shake out half the sack
of heavy wet shells
onto soft cypress boards
and commence to prise them open
with their stubby knives.
From ”Verdict”
Ava Leavell Haymon’s collection Kitchen Heat is comprised of rewarding and provocative poetry. Haymon’s poems have a deceptively simple surface barely concealing a mystery and darkness lurking beneath. Each subsequent section—starting with CHOOSING MONOGAMY, then DEPENDABLE HEAT SOURCE, then concluding with BABIES’ BONES AND MAGIC CRYSTALS—improves, transforming symbols and ideas introduced earlier. Though covering similar ground, Haymon continually adjusts her focus so each poem, though standing on its own, contributes another distinct emotion to the overall arc.
This collection feels like a cross between John Ashbery and Elizabeth Bishop. Like Ashbery, it’s simplicity is mesmerizing but continually defies definitive explanations; like Bishop, Haymon takes every day, ordinary objects and events and imbues them with profundity. It’s rewarding poetry, truly. I will certainly continue to read and reread her work.
Indoors on the stove in scalding milk, the oysters
curled like the labia of cousins who played
in the bathtub too long. My grandmother
stirred slowly, accomplished and unafraid.
At supper they’d lurk in the steaming potion
and swim unbidden into your spoon,
chewy knots, too exotic for a child’s taste--
murky, like desire, remorse, even tobacco.
At some age, every granddaughter learned
to eat the oysters in her bowl. I could do it first,
the eldest…
From ”You Never Get to the Horizon”
Louisiana Poetry Reviews
Catechism <<<<<>>>>> The Maple Leaf Rag V: An Anthology of Poetic Writings
under the Possum oak that shaded the kitchen.
A black pot sat inside on the Chambers stove,
waiting. Company was already on its way.
I never saw my grandmother
come outside, but she was always there
in time, radiating the faint impatience
a good priest uses to propel the liturgy.
Her acolyte Calvin jimmied the first shell,
gouging at the hinge as though he had to relearn
the art. He held the open half out to her,
keeping his eyes away, outside the patch of shade.
The rudely exposed oyster swam
in a dimming nacre, the unformed palm
of an embryo—more phlegm than flesh.
She put the transparent thing in her mouth.
The sun stopped in its painful crawl
across the sky, dusty sumac leaves hung
motionless, the horses’ tails did not flick.
Once I had to close my eyes.
Then she nodded
and went back inside,
the screen door shrieking open
and banging twice at her heels.
Relief leaked over us all:
the sun let out its breath, resumed
its importance and its path
down the scalded sky.
They still alive, Calvin would say
to no one in particular, ignoring
my slack face, and he and my uncle
would shake out half the sack
of heavy wet shells
onto soft cypress boards
and commence to prise them open
with their stubby knives.
From ”Verdict”
Ava Leavell Haymon’s collection Kitchen Heat is comprised of rewarding and provocative poetry. Haymon’s poems have a deceptively simple surface barely concealing a mystery and darkness lurking beneath. Each subsequent section—starting with CHOOSING MONOGAMY, then DEPENDABLE HEAT SOURCE, then concluding with BABIES’ BONES AND MAGIC CRYSTALS—improves, transforming symbols and ideas introduced earlier. Though covering similar ground, Haymon continually adjusts her focus so each poem, though standing on its own, contributes another distinct emotion to the overall arc.
This collection feels like a cross between John Ashbery and Elizabeth Bishop. Like Ashbery, it’s simplicity is mesmerizing but continually defies definitive explanations; like Bishop, Haymon takes every day, ordinary objects and events and imbues them with profundity. It’s rewarding poetry, truly. I will certainly continue to read and reread her work.
Indoors on the stove in scalding milk, the oysters
curled like the labia of cousins who played
in the bathtub too long. My grandmother
stirred slowly, accomplished and unafraid.
At supper they’d lurk in the steaming potion
and swim unbidden into your spoon,
chewy knots, too exotic for a child’s taste--
murky, like desire, remorse, even tobacco.
At some age, every granddaughter learned
to eat the oysters in her bowl. I could do it first,
the eldest…
From ”You Never Get to the Horizon”
Louisiana Poetry Reviews
Catechism <<<<<>>>>> The Maple Leaf Rag V: An Anthology of Poetic Writings
Displaying 1 of 1 review