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Steam-Cleaning Love
Lesbian. Poetry. Queer. LGBT studies. Poetry. Letters to women. Love poems.
Jane Eaton 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.
"There is joy in these poems, and a vibrant healthiness. Her poems are about many things we might like to call ordinary, but they’re written in a way that’s anything but."--sub-TERRAIN
"Her poetry is often ribald, and sometimes it is frankly lewd--and how, these days, one welcomes a bit ofhonest lewdness."--BC Bookworld
"Hamilton has an attractively skittish voice that lends the work a very individual cast. An accomplished collection."--Books in Canada
"I was impressed by the amazing insights; an incredible rendering of the pain and joys of truly loving relationships."--ARC
"...Hamilton knows how to forge tough language and difficult truths into poetry, and this collection includes many well-wrought and satisfying poems.
The first section, “How We Are Counted,” contains poems that are primarily centred on the body, with a smattering of poems on mysticism and betrayal. Some of these poems struck me as brave, particularly “Apology”: “Eventually I was the liar… I betrayed you easily / as rain falls, as earth thirsts, / my fledg-ling hunger / parting its beak / for the worm, for the for the kiss, / the satisfying thrust.”
Hamilton seems at her best when talking big poems with big subjects; some writers need the added weight of a big poem in order to really show some of their muscles, and this seems to be the case here. In “Barbara’s Garden,” written for a woman whose lover has died of cancer, Hamilton shows great facility with language: “the sky above Stanley Park feckled with stars, / the candles on our table unwavering…” The narrator imagines Barbara “listening for the vibration of life,” and “her articulate flight / through the thicket of the body.”
It’s in the third section, “Window Box of Bruises,” that many of the tough and hard-won poems rise up. “Rising” shows the narrator shadowed by her dead friend in “October, that hell month… Four weeks / of changing clocks, of sparklers / moaning on the streets. Let Diane / tell you, using my tongue, gibbling / her story with my larynx and these / ugly teeth.” --Sarah Van Arsdale, Lesbian Review of Books
"Reading [these poems] is like reading other people's letters until, by the transforming magic good poems have, you discover they are all for you." -Jane Rule
Jane Eaton 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.
"There is joy in these poems, and a vibrant healthiness. Her poems are about many things we might like to call ordinary, but they’re written in a way that’s anything but."--sub-TERRAIN
"Her poetry is often ribald, and sometimes it is frankly lewd--and how, these days, one welcomes a bit ofhonest lewdness."--BC Bookworld
"Hamilton has an attractively skittish voice that lends the work a very individual cast. An accomplished collection."--Books in Canada
"I was impressed by the amazing insights; an incredible rendering of the pain and joys of truly loving relationships."--ARC
"...Hamilton knows how to forge tough language and difficult truths into poetry, and this collection includes many well-wrought and satisfying poems.
The first section, “How We Are Counted,” contains poems that are primarily centred on the body, with a smattering of poems on mysticism and betrayal. Some of these poems struck me as brave, particularly “Apology”: “Eventually I was the liar… I betrayed you easily / as rain falls, as earth thirsts, / my fledg-ling hunger / parting its beak / for the worm, for the for the kiss, / the satisfying thrust.”
Hamilton seems at her best when talking big poems with big subjects; some writers need the added weight of a big poem in order to really show some of their muscles, and this seems to be the case here. In “Barbara’s Garden,” written for a woman whose lover has died of cancer, Hamilton shows great facility with language: “the sky above Stanley Park feckled with stars, / the candles on our table unwavering…” The narrator imagines Barbara “listening for the vibration of life,” and “her articulate flight / through the thicket of the body.”
It’s in the third section, “Window Box of Bruises,” that many of the tough and hard-won poems rise up. “Rising” shows the narrator shadowed by her dead friend in “October, that hell month… Four weeks / of changing clocks, of sparklers / moaning on the streets. Let Diane / tell you, using my tongue, gibbling / her story with my larynx and these / ugly teeth.” --Sarah Van Arsdale, Lesbian Review of Books
"Reading [these poems] is like reading other people's letters until, by the transforming magic good poems have, you discover they are all for you." -Jane Rule
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
About the author
Eaton Hamilton
45 books83 followersEaton Hamilton is the queer disabled Canadian author of ten books (incl 2 chapbooks) of short fiction, poetry and memoir. They are non-binary, go by "Hamlton" and are legally " Eaton Hamilton." Their novel ,‘Weekend,' called a "tour de force" by the Vancouver Sun, appeared in 2016. Their memoir ‘Mondays are Yellow, Sundays are Grey,’ retitled ‘No More Hurt,’ was a Sunday Times bestseller (UK) and included on the Guardian's Best Books of the Year list. Their books have been shortlisted for the MIND Book Award, the BC Book Prize, the VanCity Award, the Pat Lowther Award and the Ferro-Grumley Award. They are the two-time winner of Canada's CBC Canada Writes Award for fiction (2003/2014). Their work is included in The Journey Prize Anthology, Best Canadian Short Stories, Best Canadian Poetry and was a Notable in BASS and6 times a Notable in BAE. Words in Salon, NYT, Gay Mag, Seventeen, The Rumpus, The Sun, Guernica, LARB, Medium, and many others. They edit for Many Gendered Mothers. They live near Vancouver.
Jessica's Elevator, children's
Body Rain, poetry
July Nights and Other Stories, short fiction
Steam-Cleaning Love, poetry
Mondays are Yellow/No More Hurt, memoir
Going Santa Fe, poetry chapbook
Hunger, short fiction
Love Will Burst into a Thousand Shapes, poetry
Weekend, novel
Would You Like Some Gramma On That?, fiction chapbook
Jessica's Elevator, children's
Body Rain, poetry
July Nights and Other Stories, short fiction
Steam-Cleaning Love, poetry
Mondays are Yellow/No More Hurt, memoir
Going Santa Fe, poetry chapbook
Hunger, short fiction
Love Will Burst into a Thousand Shapes, poetry
Weekend, novel
Would You Like Some Gramma On That?, fiction chapbook
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