Luddite Hymn
by andyhavens (Member) - published: October 1, 2007
Word Count: 129 Word Bytes: 1026 Viewed: 306 times
Category - Poetry
© Copyright by andyhavens

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She bakes.

The oven's heat overwhelming other senses.
A kitchen with a mission
centered dead on iron purpose.
Air shakes above the box,
wavers up in rippled force.

The smells are ones of mother
and grandmother
and grand-so-on. Apple, pecan,
pumpkin, cherry, rhubarb,
mince and
plum.

Inhale the days of simple scents,
of ginger, allspice, nutmeg.
Breathe innocent fumes and
sugared tales and
fruit in severed piles.

She runs
her kitchen like an army;
utensils at attention.
Marching rows of pans and cups
and shining sheets of tin.

The pies go to a bake sale.
Every Sunday, every Sunday.
She never sees them eaten
just the plates returned next week.

Her kitchen is an altar
and she sacrifices time there.
Like mother did. And grandma did.
And grand-so-on.

Amen.

------
______________________________________________

Check out Andy's blog on subjects creative at: TinkerX
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TinkerX: Creative Flux for the Age of Content.

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Comments

The following comments are for "Luddite Hymn"
by andyhavens

Amen, Andyhavens....
I have a hard time with grandma in the kitchen poems, and most poems of this nature, because my ornery sarcastic mind starts to wonder to such twisted verses as "my grandma smelled of pee" and that's just not right! So, to keep safe, I avoid these sentimental tributes to mothers or grandmothers kitchens and such...

I have made an exception in your case (by commenting that is) even though I know you could probably care less about my opinion or my critiques...

I mean, you are one of the old Lit.Org legendary gods of in-depth critical workshop critiquing around here, and my critiques must seem like something a cretin would scratch out in big crayon type markers -

But, I have decided to put in my 2 cents because I like this poem, and why do I like this poem? I like this poem because it didn't make me puke. You actually brought grandma's kitchen to life, and you brought the smells and feeling to life. You left me feeling nothing but respect for this grandma and this poem. Congratulations!

Blessings!

( Posted by: TheRealKarmaTseringLhamo [Member] On: October 2, 2007 )

I Like Pie...
Thanks a lot Andy Im freakin starving now...that poem was delicious..I actually smelled the damn pies..not "Pee"..Karma that was directed at you..lol...but seriously this was comforting..just like pie can be...peace

( Posted by: kilgoretrout [Member] On: October 2, 2007 )

Something stinks...
...and it's not this poem.

No, seriously. You had me from "A kitchen with a mission"!

This was wonderful. If a poem about a woman baking in a kitchen just as the great-grand-and-so-on's did could be intense, this is it. You bring the kitchen vividly to life with rippling heat, razor-straight utensils, shiny pots and baking sheets and the sweet, tangy scents of rhubarb, mince and plum.

My grandmother on my mom's side used to bake what seemed like tens of thousands of pies for the family on Thanksgiving. She always made me my very own cherry pie, because being a finicky thing, it was the only pie I lied at that age.

My dad baked a good lasagne, but other than that, the only thing he did that came close to baking was throwing a cookie sheet laden with cinnamon and nutmeg on the center rack to bake at a low heat throughout the holidays.

Couldn't really eat it, but it sure made the house smell good.

(/meghead nostalgia)

Thanks again for this. As you can see, it took me places. :)

( Posted by: chinadoll [Member] On: October 2, 2007 )

I lied
I said lied, but I meant liked. No, really. I did!

Honest!

( Posted by: chinadoll [Member] On: October 2, 2007 )

Okay…

so I now I know I have problems, everybody else got a warm glow and a nice pie smell from this… me, I was depressed, maybe even a little disturbed…

maybe it was the imperative tone of the opening “She bakes.” made this sound less like homely, more like military operation, and that “heat overwhelming other senses.” Seemed more oppressive and suffocating than friendly… then there’s “iron purpose” and “rippled force”, like she bakes with the grim determination of one doing forced labour…

“utensils at attention.” Is military and imposing too, as are “shining sheets of tin.”, that fruit is “severed” sits uncomfortably too, like behind all that sugar and sweetness there is something older and darker, brooding…

Jesus, I’m clearly nuts, or dumb as a post, or both… ‘cause I say these regiments of women, since the dawn of time, sacrificing more than time to those kitchens, but themselves, and I find it kind of unsettling… maybe I’d feel differently if the pies they ate were eaten at home and the poem concluded with a corny gathered round the table image… yeah, I probably would, but I probably wouldn’t like it as much… sorry for my warped interpretation… thanks for sharing.

( Posted by: AuldMiseryGuts [Member] On: October 2, 2007 )

Shannon, NUTS? Na! You're not nuts at all....
I think I am somewhat repelled by this genre of poems for the very same reasons:

"Jesus, I’m clearly nuts, or dumb as a post, or both… ‘cause I say these regiments of women, since the dawn of time, sacrificing more than time to those kitchens, but themselves, and I find it kind of unsettling"

It is a whole big can of women's history/issues worms! Don't want to go there, and that is why I think I get defensive and end up mocking kitchen granny/ma poems with what I have already said earlier (the pee thing)...
I want to be happy to have these warm fuzzy feelings like everyone else, but it comes convoluted with too much knowledge of history, and women's' silence. You are NOT nuts, Shannon.

Andy,

Let's just leave it at what I originally said, that you have made this poem believable to me, and you almost took me that wishful place of Oz where self-sacrificing granny/ma lives happily without societal chains and women's studies.

It is a sweet loving poem that I am sure came from a warm loving place. Peace.

( Posted by: TheRealKarmaTseringLhamo [Member] On: October 2, 2007 )

hymn? tribute? invocation?
Aside from the above debate, what rang oddly for me was the 'hymn' title. Why doesn't this feel like a hymn? I'm not sure... but I vaguely think that a hymn should contain a love for, and an understanding of the meaning of, it's subject. This sounds more like a sort-of-admiring but yet conflicted (and certainly distanced, shut-out, not intimate) tribute.

Besides that, I think I fall closest to Shannon in being disturbed by the juxtaposition of mother/grandmother images with her militarised kitchen. It doesn't sound to me like a feminist/sacrifice issue, but it does lack warmth. Baking is only maternal and nostalgic if you get to eat the results, messily and still warm, instead of sending them off puritanically to be sold. Well, for me, anyway.

My mother didn't (still doesn't), bake like the woman in the poem. But my most affectionate memories feature her cursing as the marmalade boiled over whenever she turned her back, or dashing downstairs shrieking and half-dressed to find a suspended jelly bag had collapsed and pebble-dashed the place from floor to ceiling with raspberry puree. (My mother, incidentally, nevertheless make superlative preserves...)

( Posted by: mobiussoul [Member] On: October 2, 2007 )

Thanks, all. Especially Shannon ;-)
Oh, it's grim it's meant to be, aye. From the title on down... You wouldn't want a straight-up warm-and-fuzzy from me, eh?

This was a challenge from a friend of mine to "write a poem about Luddites." Well, I never go in straight for the challenge. I took "Luddite" to be less about a fear of technological change, and more about a fear of change and love of tradition in the face of... well... anything.

We heap all these traditional ideas/ideals onto particular scenes and archetypes. We fetishize whatever "ways" were handed down, regardless of whether or not they make sense.

To Karma... I cherish all comments, yours included. Seeing a comment email from Lit hit my inbox is a treat. I just tend to save mine for when I feel I can make a critical contribution. Maybe I should get out more ;-)

To Mobius... the title is an oxymoron, in a way. As is the meat when applied to the title. Having grown up Methodist, hymns are both a fundamental part of worship, and pretty explicitly related to praise, and also very metered and properly rhymed. This is an anti-hymn in many ways. So, yeah... it ain't right with itself.

To Shannon... Thanks. "Disturbed" is 100% what I was going for. She is alone in the kitchen. She delivers the pies and gets back the empty plates. The deliberate dehumanizing, anonymous tone of "grand-so-on" is meant to convey a sense of faceless repetition; generations marching forward doing what the ones previously did... for the one reason that it was done before.

"She sacrifices time there" is meant two ways. One, she gives up her time to do this thing; to practice a ritual of destruction of life ("fruit in severed piles") in order to present a thing for the sake of the thing itself. The repetition of "Every Sunday, every Sunday" implies that it is done not for the "Sunday-ness" of the act, but simply because it must be done *every* week.

The sacrifice of time is also a killing of the possibility that time might move forward and provide her with something else to do; something meaningful in its own right, not a campaign to repeat an act based on tradition. Time is meant to change us, to change the world. To force an act from the past into the future for no good reason is to sacrifice the positive nature of time and change.

The first line: "She bakes." is a straightforward, unsentimental statement of fact. No explanation of emotion, background, reasons, feelings, motivations, etc. It's just what she does. Because it's what she does. Creepy indeed.

To chinadoll/all -- My mom has a Master's degree in home economics. I grew up with fresh baked goods and cheese soufle and homemade bread. I have wonderfully good memories of helping to bake cookies and pies and cake, etc. So... yeah. The kitchen has powerful, positive associations for many of us.

But the "Luddite" tension is meant to ask the question, "Is it done because it's good, or is it done because it's the way it's done." The kitchen, in this piece, was an easy metaphor (for me) for a place where things stay the same. In this case, perhaps not for the good.

Living in the past. Sacrificing time. Not necessarily a happy recipe.

( Posted by: andyhavens [Member] On: October 2, 2007 )

Andy in Luddite kitchen
Too late for commenting, I suppose, now that you've elucidated everything. I do have one thing to say, though, and it's about the air that shakes above the box and wavers up in rippled force. This is creepier than utensils at attention, I think.
All is not right in this kitchen. It's less creepy to be dealt, as a reader, the familiar, which would involve the ground shaking. That the air shakes is more than unsettling. It's horrific.
What and how is one supposed to breathe any heat, any smells, anything at all in a kitchen where the very air shakes? It's stifling in this kitchen. No comfort to be found here.
That this air also wavers up in rippling force hints at it somehow destroying the kitchen's ceiling as it rises, bringing on an acute Chicken Little event...
Scary place, this Luddite kitchen, long before the pieplates go military.
I like the contrast this poem creates when it gets to the sacrifice and the altar: the rite/ritual of this sacrifice is mundane rather than sacred and so, maybe that's why this kitchen feels so destabilized.

Thanks for posting, and explaining.

Lucie

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: October 3, 2007 )

Home scenery
Great scenery here, even if a bit predictable and somewhat cliche. It does hit the sensory button for earlier times when we, much younger and more aware than we realized then, noticed the simpler elements of our everyday, everyweek timelines. And those days when the kitchen was the central command of every house.

As I grow more cynical with age I find myself writing more, and reading more about those events. I remember, just as this poem details, how I could go into different homes of my friends and take in such vastly different aromas what was cooking there. It seems like mom's cooking was never quite as seductive as some other kid's mother's recipes...

Good Job Andy, makes me want another cup of coffee and to go dig up old photo albums.

BW

( Posted by: BWOz [Member] On: October 7, 2007 )

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