The Strict Economy of Fire: Poems

by Ava Leavell Haymon

Overview

On a pilgrimage to the Kingdom of Nepal, a group of American women trek into the Himalayas, beginning and ending in Kathmandu. They ascend, turn back just short of reaching their destination because of impassable snow, and descend. “Say what you see,” smoke rising on a distant mountain seems to command, and Ava Leavell Haymon responds with language that strives to reconcile the extremes of this exotic place— danger and awesome beauty, community and abandonment, death and life, flame’s heat and altitude’s cold, an alien landscape and the poet’s own deep memories. Fires—of cooking, festivals, cremation, deforestation, and starvation—rage through the poems; like the name of the Hindu goddess Kali, fire is “destruction and creation / in one word.” An exacting yet exhilarating poetry collection, The Strict Economy of Fire asks what we can know and what we can never know “on this far side of the earth.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807129944
Publisher:	Louisiana State University Press
Publication date:	09/01/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Ava Leavell Haymon lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and teaches poetry writing there and at a summer retreat center in the mountains of New Mexico. This is her first book.

Table of Contents

	Care and Feeding	1
	God of Luck	2
	Festival of Lights	3
	Visitation: Goddess of Prosperity	5
	Above the River Ghandaki	7
	Walking	8
	Moonfall	9
	The Questions Women Ask	10
	Through the Black Ranges	11
	Village of Thieves	12
	First Smoke	13
	Trick of Distance	18
	The Art and Practice of Description	20
	The Only Way Home Is to Climb Higher	24
	Catechism: Om Mani Padme Um	25
	Rhododendron Forest on the Last Ascent	26
	Crossing the Pass	27
	Nightfall	28
	Waking	29
	The Way Down Is Steep As the Way Up	31
	Face of Glory	32
	To Climb Mountains, You Look at the Ground	34
	Walking Through Luck to Abundance	35
	Reentry: Agricultural Horizon	36
	Decorating for Holiday	38
	Household Sculpture	40
	Stars for the Ganesh Himal	43
	Bus Ride Back to Kathmandu	44
	What Comes: An Offering in Gratitude for a Safe Expedition	49
	The Question Everybody Asks	50
	Naming Red	52