Sweeping Beauty
“Gemin’s book embraces women’s ‘domesticity,’ owns it, and stresses its transformative power. Sweeping Beauty explores the role of women in the home place, how they’ve found both confinement and comfort there, how they’ve learned from and departed from the lives of their female ancestors who have swept so many floors, baked so much bread, and hung so much wash on the line. The book celebrates ‘women's work’ and highlights its connection to myths and fables of cultures throughout the world.”—Mary Swander, author of The Desert Pilgrim: En Route to Mysticism and Miracles
“The poems in Sweeping Beauty are like prequels to an archaeological dig—real voices recording the nature of our lives before the crockery is buried in lava, before the house is tumbled by quake or quiet centuries. The poets in this collection often mix themes of writing with their images of housework, acknowledging poetry’s recognition of our most basic needs and our efforts to resist them, our longing for order and chaos both, our endless fascination with how our lives can be stirred, swept, polished, and then undone all over again. What a treasure—to find these poems which take as their source our daily lives, and discover there profound insight, energy, transformation.”—Betsy Sholl
Thankless, mundane, and “never done,” housework continues to be seen as women’s work, and contemporary women poets are still writing the domestic experience— sometimes resenting its futility and lack of social rewards, sometimes celebrating its sensory delights and immediate gratification, sometimes cherishing the undeniable link it provides to their mothers and grandmothers. In Sweeping Beauty, a number of these poets illustrate how housekeeping’s repetitive motions can free the imagination and release the housekeeper’s muse.
For many, housekeeping provides the key to a state of mind approaching meditation, a state of mind also conducive to making poems. The more than eighty contributors to Sweeping Beauty embrace this state and confirm that women are pioneers and inventors as well as life-givers and nurturers. “My fingers are forks, my tongue is a rose . . . / I turn silver spoons into rabbit stew / make quinces my thorny upholstery . . . / how else could the side of beef walk / with the sea urchin roe?” sings the cook in Natasha Sajé’s ode to kitchen alchemy.
“I love the notion that we can take our most poisonous angers, our most despairing or humiliated or stalemated moments, and make something good of them—something tensile and enduring,” says Leslie Ullman. Whether we are fully present in our tasks or “gone in the motion” of performing them, whether our stovetops are home to “stewpots of discontent” or grandmother’s favorite jam, something is always cooking.
Julia Alvarez, Margaret Atwood, Dorothy Barresi, Marianne Boruch, Victoria Chang, Sandra Cisneros, Lucille Clifton, Denise Duhamel, Heid Erdrich, Joy Harjo, Holly Iglesias, Allison Joseph, Julia Kasdorf, Jesse Lee Kercheval, Dorianne Laux, Kyoko Mori, Sharon Olds, Alicia Ostriker, Maureen Seaton, Cathy Song, Joyce Sutphen, and Belle Waring.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Elizabeth Alexander, “The female seer will burn upon this pyre”
Julia Alvarez, How I Learned To Sweep
Ginger Andrews, Down on My Knees
Ginger Andrews, The Hurricane Sisters Work Regardless
Margaret Atwood, Romantic
Juliana Baggott, Kitchens: 1959
Juliana Baggott, Poetry Despises Your Attempts at Domesticity
Dorothy Barresi, In Waking Words
Dorothy Barresi, The Prodigal Daughter
Jan Beatty, Modern Love
Jan Beatty, Pitssburgh Poem
Kimberly Blaeser, Dictionary for the New Century
Kimberly Blaeser, What They Did by Lamplight
Marianne Boruch, Sewing
Jill Breckenridge, Cooking Catalogue
Jeanne Bryner, Desert Flowers
Jeanne Bryner, Part of a Larger Country
Victoria Chang, Five-Year Plan
Marilyn Chin, The Floral Apron
Sandra Cisneros, A Man in My Bed Like Cracker Crumbs
Lucille Clifton, quilting
Geraldine Connolly, Mother, a Young Wife Learns to Sew
Geraldine Connolly, New House
Barbara Crooker, Grating Parmesan
Deborah Digges, Broom
Amy Dryansky, The Size of a Bed Sheet
Denise Duhamel, The Ugly Step Sister
Heid Erdrich, Good Woman
Heid Erdrich, Sweeping Heaven
Susan Firer, Peonies
Diane Gilliam Fisher, After the Miscarriage
Diane Gilliam Fisher, Sweet Hour
Pamela Gemin, Upper Penninsula Landscape with Aunts
Joy Harjo, Perhaps the World Ends Here
Holly Iglesias, Feeding Frency
Holly Iglesias, Thursday Afternoon: Life Is Sweet
Angela Jackson, Cayenne
Allison Joseph, Domestic Humiliation
Allison Joseph, Kitchen
Allison Joseph, Plenty
Julia Kasdorf, What I Learned from My Mother
Julia Kasdorf, When Our Women Go Crazy
Laura Kasischke, Dinner
Laura Kasischke, Housekeeping in a Dream
Laura Kasischke, The Visibility of Spirits
Josie Kearns, Moving Furniture
Sarah Kennedy, How My Mother-in-Law Instructed Me in Slaughter
Sarah Kennedy, Maid
Jesse Lee Kercheval, Ham and the Moon
Julie King, Giving the House Away
Kristin Kovacic, Brick
Kristin Kovacic, Covered Dish
Laurie Kutchins, Clothesline
Estella Lauter, Spots
Dorianne Laux, The Idea of Housework
Dorianne Laux, Reetika Arranges My Closet
Lisa Lewis, May Mowing Clover
Diane Lockward, Vegetable Love
Gail Martin, God Scrubs the Tub
Gail Martin, God Vacuums the Pool
Gail Martin, God Packs Lunches
Gail Martin, Lemons
Shara McCallum, What Lies Beneath
Paula McLain, Home Remedy
Jane Mead, Third Stair, Seventh Stair, Landing
Sarah Messer, Some women marry houses
Leslie Adrienne Miller, Convolvulus Tricolor
Laurel Mills, The Days of My Mother
Kyoko Mori, At Thirty
Sharon Olds, Bread
Alicia Suskin Ostriker, the shekhinah as mute
Gailmarie Pahmeier, Grief Comes in Smallest Ways
Gailmarie Pahmeier, Sunday Baking
Peggy Penn, The Soup
Zarina Mullan Plath, Cooking Lesson
Martha Rhodes, All the Soups
Natasha Sajé, Song of the Cook
Natasha Sajé, What I Want to Make for You
Jane Satterfield, Duties and Vocations
Jane Satterfield, Wintering
Maureen Seaton, Furious Cooking
Heather Sellers, In the Kitchen Dancing to Kitty Wells
Paula Sergi, One Quick Quiz
Diane Seuss, Purpose
Faith Shearin, Entropy
Faith Shearin, The Sinking
Cathy Song, Immaculate Lives
Cathy Song, A Poet in the House
Cathy Song, The Sky-Blue Dress
Kate Sontag, Plum Crazy
Joyce Sutphen, Household Muse
Virginia Chase Sutton, Housekeeping
Elizabeth Tibbetts, Coming Home
Alison Townsend, Hospital Corners
Alison Townsend, Western Holly Stove
Ann Townsend, Date Nut Bread
Ann Townsend, Day’s End
Ann Townsend, The Dinner Guest
Natasha Trethewey, Domestic Work, 1937
Natasha Trethewey, Housekeeping
Leslie Ullman, The History of Women
Judith Vollmer, Canning Cellar, Early Sixties
Belle Waring, Back to Catfish
Ingrid Wendt, The Lady on the Cover of Family Circle
Ingrid Wendt, Starting from Scratch
Valerie Wohlfeld, Quilt
Carolyne Wright, Prayer
Contributors’ Notes
Permissions
Index to Titles