Steam-Cleaning Love

By J. A. Hamilton

J.A. Hamilton distinguished herself with Body Rain (1991) a tough, passionate lyrical book written out of a woman's anger and a woman’s love. Steam-Cleaning Love, Hamilton’s second book of poetry, is "ginger root tough and jelly edgy" -- spicy, sweet, biting; it overwhelms, inundates, the palate. This new book revives the angry, biting, funny, loving, randy voice that won readers to her first volume, but sets that voice in a gentler space. These are passionate poems that celebrate women as friends and lovers, and the beauty, the delight, the desire of women's bodies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: Oct 15, 1993
• ISBN: 9781771312523

J. A. Hamilton

Jane Eaton Hamilton is the author of eight books of fiction and poetry. Her memoir Mondays are Yellow, Sundays are Grey, retitled No More Hurt, was a Sunday Times bestseller in the UK, shortlisted for the MIND Book Award and the VanCity Book Prize, and appeared on the Guardian's books of the year list. Her short story collection July Nights was shortlisted for the BC Book Prizes and her short fiction collection Hunger was shortlisted for the Ferro Grumley Award. Body Rain, her first book of poetry, was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award. She has published in the NY Times, Seventeen magazine, Salon, Maclean’s, VIDA, Numero Cinq, the Globe and Mail, the Missouri Review, Ms. blog, the Alaska Quarterly Review and many other places. She has been a recipient of arts awards from the BC Arts Council and the Canada Council. Jane is also a photographer and visual artist and was a litigant in Canada’s same-sex marriage case. She lives in Vancouver. Jane has written as J.A. Hamilton.

Book preview

Steam-Cleaning Love

Brick Books

CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Hamilton, J.A. 1954-

Steam-cleaning love

Poems.

ISBN 0-919626-68-8

I. Title.

PS8565.A556S74 1993     c811'.54     C93-095041-0

PR9199.3.H35S74 1993

Copyright © J.A. Hamilton, 1993.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council for generous assistance, as well as the following journals for first publishing some of these poems: Malahat Review and American Voice, ‘the body's memory’ and ‘Silver Pennies’ are from Body Rain (Brick Books, 1991). ‘Steam-Cleaning Love’ was published in Vintage 92 (League of Canadian Poets, 1992). ‘Seaweed’ appeared in Snapshots: The New Canadian Fiction (Black Moss Press, 1992).

I am deeply indebted to Stan, Marnie, Kitty, John and Sue.

The support of the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council is gratefully acknowledged. The support of the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Recreation is also gratefully acknowledged.

Cover design and artwork by Sheila Norgate.

Brick Books

www.brickbooks.ca

Box 20081

431 Boler Road

London, Ontario

N6K 4G6

Canada

The pressure is women

holding my hand

This book is for them

Contents

How We Are Counted

Blue

the body's memory

Apology

Forecast

Barbaras Garden

Berkeley Fire

Thank You

Adoption

Silver Pennies

Steam-Cleaning Love

The Interrogation of Senses

Entering

Kiss

Orange You

That Old Means-Everything

Recreation: First Night

bungee jumping

Jitterbug

Equinox

The Proposal

Panic Attack

February 14

Honey

Hallowe'en

Seaweed

Sturdies Bay, Galiano Island

Village Bay, Mayne Island

Otter Bay, Pender Island

Panic Attack: Granville Street

Dew-Point

I Love You Wildly

Air, I Am Air

Listen

Language Is a Globe in My Throat

Musician

Striped Cat

Athens at Least

Silences

Division

In My Mind, Cleanly

Paint in Tins

Love, that old means-everything

Immaculata

Window Box of Bruises

Terra Incognita

Lockjaw

Gambling

Aflame

Salt Tongues

Sky

Trash

Rising

Horseshoes

Ladder

The Pause Between Us

Across Horizons

Appropriation

Jericho

Paper and Ink

Elemental

Notes

How We Are Counted

Blue

for Corbin

When you came to town

you were in an envelope

I opened you

in the way of women opening women

I let you loose at False Creek

riding the seesaw

The day was full of blue

blue water

and blue ducks waddling the lawn

I was very happy

I turned on the sun

undid it gently

and wrapped you inside

blue fire

I was looking for words

I ran to the beach

I climbed the lifeguard tower

and pumped-up there

throwing blue to gulls

All the boats in the harbour

capsized

The mountains jigged

enormous shoulders –

what a scene

I sting with kisses I don't send

Not love, then –

the past is elastic and snaps

I was 35

It was the middle, a corner

This birthday cake is

wrapped in blue wax

I send it along

to an American address

Words are an apportionment

Wild, you say and maybe it stops

I