{"id":440,"date":"2017-01-05T14:14:44","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T19:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=440"},"modified":"2017-01-05T14:14:44","modified_gmt":"2017-01-05T19:14:44","slug":"review-of-flour-water-salt-by-ruth-bavetta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=440","title":{"rendered":"Review of Flour, Water, Salt by Ruth Bavetta"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Ruth Bavetta. Flour, Water, Salt. <\/em>FutureCycle Press, 2016. 73 pgs. $15.95.<\/p>\n

The titles of the poems in Ruth Bavetta\u2019s most recent collection, Flour, Water, Salt, <\/em>will certainly pique the interest of most readers: \u201cIf I Were a Maker of Marzipan,\u201d \u201cGrandmother\u2019s Bird\u2019s Nest Pie,\u201d \u201cMore Than Thirteen Lemons in the Rain,\u201d \u201cA World with No Chickens.\u201d These titles suggest an imagination that is attentive to the world, to its detail, and one that is also engaged with language. These characteristics are born out in the poems, which consider the rituals of daily life, particularly of food and cooking, meals eaten with family members, the bodies that are nourished in kitchens.<\/p>\n

The collection is organized into three sections named with the three nouns of the title. Several poems in each section somehow incorporate the subject, creating a thoughtful coherence, but the approaches are unique and intriguing, analogous to a collection of related short stories in which the protagonist of one might appear only as a fleeting pedestrian in another. The reader begins to anticipate the appearance of flour or water or salt and remains aware of the connotations of these necessities even when the poems don\u2019t mention them directly.<\/p>\n

Among the most successful poems in the collection is \u201cMore Than Thirteen Lemons in the Rain,\u201d written \u201cafter Wallace Stevens.\u201d Through its startling imagery and associative organization, this poem demonstrates the influence of Stevens\u2019 famous thirteen ways, but its references and connotations are less obscure than in much of Stevens\u2019 work. The poem is composed in couplets, each of which could stand independent of the others, but the accumulation of imagery contributes to a more pronounced effect than any individual couplet could. Here are the opening stanzas:<\/p>\n

The tree, not in an orchard
\nbut alone in an overgrown garden.<\/p>\n

The fruit, brilliant
\non this grey day, each one its own sun.<\/p>\n

Lemon after lemon after lemon,
\nall the same, yet none the same.<\/p>\n

Sour surrounded by bitterness
\nsurrounded by light.<\/p>\n

We see the tree first amid disorder, and then we see the fruit as light amid darkness. Couplets are perhaps the cleanest and most crisp stanzaic form, especially when each second line is end-stopped. Immediately, therefore, the poem brings order to the overgrown chaos of the garden, and to the almost profligate abundance of the tree, the \u201cLemon after lemon after lemon.\u201d The poem is embedded with paradox\u2014not only order and chaos or \u201cbrilliant\u201d yellow against a \u201cgrey day,\u201d but sweet and sour, wine and lemonade. The speaker refers to human beings in only three of the eleven stanzas, including two of the most memorable, stanza five: \u201cHe thought it was a ball until \/ the fragrance stained his fingers\u201d and stanza nine: \u201cBlood running down my mother\u2019s arms, \/ the lemon\u2019s thorns.\u201d A lemon distinguishing itself as lemon through \u201cfragrance\u201d is not surprising, yet it is startling in the context of this stanza, when it is unrecognizable as fruit or even as living object until \u201cHe\u201d smells it. This couplet prepares the reader for additional references to human engagement, but we are unprepared for the implicit violence in stanza nine. Aside from the \u201cgrey day\u201d in stanza two, the poem overflows with yellow and yellow and yellow\u2014shining bright warmth. Then in stanza nine, and only in stanza nine, we see a color that is equally bright and warm. Unlike lemon juice, however, blood is neither sour nor bitter but intimates passion and danger. This poem would have been memorable even without stanza nine; with it, the poem is haunting.<\/p>\n

Bavetta exploits concrete imagery throughout this collection; her skill with imagery is perhaps her greatest strength. The poems are most successful when she permits the imagery to imply metaphor or to suggest significance. In some of the poems, the metaphors\u2014especially as constructed \u201cthe x of y\u201d with \u201cy\u201d and abstraction\u2014feel self-conscious and even unnecessary: \u201cwhipped \/ into a meringue of longing\u201d (\u201cQueen of Puddings\u201d), \u201cdredged in the flour of expectation\u201d (\u201cHoneymoon\u201d), \u201cDrank the water of discontent\u201d (\u201cWhat We Did\u201d). Some of these metaphors would be stronger if they were implied, e.g. \u201cdredged in expectation\u201d or \u201cdrank discontent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flour, Water, Salt <\/em>is a thoughtful collection whose arrangement creates a narrative of relationship. The tone is often compassionate, even when the speaker expresses anger or explores bitterness. That is, she treats others, including an ex-husband, fairly\u2014although he\u2019s described negatively, the speaker most often includes herself in her critique. In its entirely, the book is an exploration of anger and joy, hope and sadness that equates, ultimately, to acceptance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ruth Bavetta. Flour, Water, Salt. FutureCycle Press, 2016. 73 pgs. $15.95. The titles of the poems in Ruth Bavetta\u2019s most recent collection, Flour, Water, Salt, will certainly pique the interest of most readers: \u201cIf I Were a Maker of Marzipan,\u201d \u201cGrandmother\u2019s Bird\u2019s Nest Pie,\u201d \u201cMore Than Thirteen Lemons in the Rain,\u201d \u201cA World with No […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":442,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}