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House & Home Poetry Prompt: The Kitchen

By Heather Eure 8 Comments

Kitchen Poetry Stove Top Burner
Historically, the hearth was a stone or brick-lined fireplace used for heating and cooking food. Because the hearth was an integral part of the home, usually its most important feature, the word became synonymous with the meaning of home. We still center ourselves around the kitchen. How many of us, during a party will meander through a house until we are standing in the kitchen with others? The kitchen could be considered the heart of any home.

“When I am in the Kitchen” by Jeanne Marie Beaumont uses a stream-of-consciousness style as she goes about her business in the kitchen, looking at and using objects that are closely linked to family and memory:

When I am in the Kitchen

I think about the past. I empty the ice-cube trays
crack crack cracking like bones, and I think
of decades of ice cubes and of John Cheever,
of Anne Sexton making cocktails, of decades
of cocktail parties, and it feels suddenly far
too lonely at my counter. Although I have on hooks
nearby the embroidered apron of my friend’s
grandmother and one my mother made for me
for Christmas 30 years ago with gingham I had
coveted through my childhood. In my kitchen
I wield my great aunt’s sturdy black-handled
soup ladle and spatula, and when I pull out
the drawer, like one in a morgue, I visit
the silverware of my husband’s grandparents.
We never met, but I place this in my mouth
every day and keep it polished out of duty.
In the cabinets I find my godmother’s
teapot, my mother’s Cambridge glass goblets,
my mother-in-law’s Franciscan plates, and here
is the cutting board my first husband parqueted
and two potholders I wove in grade school.
Oh the past is too much with me in the kitchen,
where I open the vintage metal recipe box,
robin’s egg blue in its interior, to uncover
the card for Waffles, writ in my father’s hand
reaching out from the grave to guide me
from the beginning, “sift and mix dry ingredients”
with his note that this makes “3 waffles in our
large pan” and around that our an unbearable
round stain—of egg yolk or melted butter?—
that once defined a world.

Try It

Write a poem about your kitchen or the items in it. Do you have recipe books or pots and pans that have been passed down to you? Is there a chair eased to a place of sublime comfort that is none other than your favorite spot? Describe what is rich and meaningful in your kitchen and create poetry from these things. Share it with us in the comment section below.

Featured Poem

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here is a poem by Ken we enjoyed:

Forwarding Address Requested

Many homes have
housed these bones,
walls and floors
like arms and laps,
ghosted with the echoes
of lives lived within,
where the setting
becomes part of the cast.

See these dwellings as people
the shape and carry of them
in mind’s eye,
like family,
miss them each as much,
or not,
when they are gone
as aunts or uncles,
cozy grandparents,
or lovers turned cold.

Each parting,
taken through packing,
pallet and postal change,
is a grieving,
change of chapter
in the story of ourselves,
close and lock the door,
drop off the key,
turn the page.

—by Ken Denk

Photo by Laura Henderson. Creative Commons via Flickr.

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How to Write a Poem 283 high How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.

“How to Write a Poem is a classroom must-have.”
—Callie Feyen, English Teacher, Maryland

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  • Author
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Heather Eure
Heather Eure
Heather Eure has served as the Poetry Editor for the late Burnside Collective and Special Projects Editor for us at Tweetspeak Poetry. Her poems have appeared at Every Day Poems. Her wit has appeared just about everywhere she's ever showed up, and if you're lucky you were there to hear it.
Heather Eure
Latest posts by Heather Eure (see all)
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Filed Under: Blog, House&Home, poetry prompt, poetry teaching resources, writer's group resources, writing prompts

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Comments

  1. Robbie Pruitt says

    December 14, 2015 at 12:08 pm

    Kitchen Grace

    Grace and her mother are a perfect team.
    Mom orchestrating the ingredients;
    Grace perched proudly in her chair,
    Wooden spoon in hand—focused.
    The mixer loudly churns butter and sugar.
    She exclaims, “I don’t put my finger in there!”
    Flour dusts the countertop and covers everything.
    Grace in her fascination makes cookies for her dad.

    © December 14, 2015, Robbie Pruitt

    Reply
  2. Andrew H says

    December 15, 2015 at 9:27 am

    I see myself. Is this usual?
    The table faces outward
    Into darkness. There, swimming
    In the ink of time
    I rest.

    There I can see inward,
    Not out. Light, black tiles
    The bustle of some meal
    Progressing like instruction;
    A test.

    There is a pineapple, shining
    Belleek, quite rare – unique
    With swirling lid. It lay
    A time, but when was it
    Caressed?

    A book, I’m sure it must
    Be mine, sits stately
    By the chair. A gift
    Left there for me, at my
    Behest.

    Most of all, comfort;
    Life, and joy, and care.
    They were such happy days. Inward
    So very inward, comes reply –
    The last.

    A bag shifts weight, the me
    In flows of time ripples. Window
    Stares forlorn at me. It’s dark, so dark.
    The past leaves us so suddenly,
    So fast.

    I tried something new with this one, let me know if it worked! Don’t worry, I’m not as grim as this portrays – I was just experimenting a wee bit.

    Reply
    • L. L. Barkat says

      December 16, 2015 at 6:24 pm

      I especially like:

      “In the ink of time
      I rest.”

      and

      “There is a pineapple, shining
      Belleek, quite rare – unique
      With swirling lid”

      Also, I did enjoy the form you played with. And how the last two rhymes are full rhymes with each other and half rhymes with the rest. Almost gives it the faint echo of a sonnet. 🙂

      Reply
      • Andrew H says

        December 20, 2015 at 10:55 am

        Thanks – you picked out the two bits that I’m happy with, and I was actually thinking of a sonnet when I wrote the last bit. Very discerning of you, heh. 🙂

        Reply
  3. nancy marie davis says

    December 19, 2015 at 4:09 pm

    dishes dishes
    hard sealed
    dirty day
    old
    wait
    and wait
    for that sudsy
    burst shine
    scrubbed
    crumbs
    trashed
    i am the center
    the sink full with
    still still water
    the stove is
    cooler than that empty fridge
    portions for one
    frozen love
    bowl and spoon
    to feed me

    Reply
  4. Katie says

    October 26, 2017 at 11:50 am

    Making Fruit Cakes With Mama

    Tip-toed, I stretch
    on the small wooden stool,
    craning my neck to see over the lip of the huge mixing bowl.

    There’s a mountain in it!
    Sure enough – of deep greens and rich reds,
    candied fruit that shines like jewels on top of
    white shredded coconut, walnut pieces, golden raisins.

    Next we’ll add dry ingredients
    measuring with the spoons on the ring
    and the cups hanging from hooks above the sink.

    Then, some other things she calls wet ingredients:
    fresh eggs, vegetable oil, vanilla extract, “may I smell the cap?”
    “Okay, and we better get the phone book to make you taller. Can’t have you
    slipping while you help me stir everything together!”

    I rub my tummy
    as my fingers, hands, and arms
    can’t wait to stir the mound until it’s gooey, lumpy, yummy.

    While she stands behind me
    I help her make the fruit cake for our friends
    and neighbors who will soon taste this Christmas Treat.
    Won’t they be surprised that I’m big enough now for baking with Mama!

    Reply
  5. Katie says

    October 26, 2017 at 8:53 pm

    small kitchen island
    circling you with puppy eyes
    they await the bowl

    &

    window over sink
    looking out across the green
    golfers wait to putt

    &

    my first pair
    of floral cafe curtains
    billow in the wind

    &

    a clear canal view
    showing clouds or sky above
    changes with the tides

    &

    two tiered counter top
    divides food prep from playtime
    copper fridge and stove

    &

    three doors in or out
    sometimes makes me want to shout
    go the other way

    &

    large bowing window
    lends front row seat on bird show
    red wings come and go

    Well, talk about a walk down memory lane – these haiku share memories of kitchens I have known:)

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. House & Home: Living Room Poems - says:
    December 21, 2015 at 8:00 am

    […] to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. Here is a poem by Andrew we […]

    Reply

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