gemswebea

Sweeping Beauty

Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework
Editor(s): 
Pamela Gemin


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2005
212 pages, 6 x 9 inches
Paper: 
$24.95
0-87745-968-1
978-0-87745-968-2
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“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.

Contributors: 

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.

Table of contents: 

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

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