Kitchen Witch by Theresa Boyar 
Chicago: Dancing Girl Press, 2007.
Reviewed by Kristina Marie Darling

In her recent chapbook Kitchen Witch, Theresa Boyar combines household appliances with broomsticks, fallen soufflés, and apocalypse documentaries, giving readers a new recipe for a fun, unpredictable collection of poems.  Often pairing the domestic with the supernatural, Boyar’s work uses conventionally feminine imagery in subversive ways, turning stay-at-home moms into conjurers of “new stars from the burnt-out sky” (31).   Filled with unmade beds and smashed station wagons, Kitchen Witch presents a complex vision of wives and mothers, suggesting that womanhood contains fulfillments more profound than a successful stew or pot roast, dazzling readers with its evocative imagery throughout. 

Particularly impressive in her use of cooking as a metaphor for traditional housewifery, Boyar’s poems depict burnt toast alongside unplanned children and unbalanced checkbooks, resulting in an altogether modern vision of domestic life.  This motif is most apparent in her poem “Our Kitchen of Perpetual Failure,” in which the speaker narrates a series of failed culinary experiments.  For instance, Theresa Boyer writes: 

We tuck in ribs, a long

empurpled rack soaked

in honey and ginger.

It comes out later, minus

the promised aroma,

the bubbling dark glaze.

We suspect a revolution. (19)

Juxtaposing culinary pursuits and disaster, Boyar suggests that the true “revolution” is a home life that possesses beauty in its imperfection.  Often mixing the pristine with the messy, Kitchen Witch is filled with poems like this one, that question traditional depictions of wives and mothers while remaining lyrical and engaging all the while.

Boyar’s use of supernatural imagery in depicting this imperfect domestic life is equally striking.  Through her invocation of witches, spells, and wicked cackles alongside kitchen appliances, Boyar gives her stay-at-home mom speakers not only agency but sassiness, rounding out a subversive yet quirky chapbook of poetry.  This theme is exemplified by Theresa Boyar’s poem “Witch,” in which she writes:  

Say the word and I’m in.

The fault-line spine and knuckle-locks,

the smell of things burning, things burnt,

that cataract eye sizing you up,

divining what she needs to destroy you.

Don’t we all burn

for that kind of power?

Pairing brooms and linoleum with the power that every woman wants, Boyar suggests that there is magic to be had in domestic life, but dishpans are what one makes of them.  One of many poems in Kitchen Witch that juxtaposes power with supposed subjugation, Theresa Boyer’s new chapbook redefines “the modern woman” while delivering its own unique musicality throughout.

All points considered, Kitchen Witch is a fun, altogether original read. Anyone who enjoys feminist poetry that really cooks should add this book to their library. Five stars. 

Kristina Marie Darling is an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis.  She is the author of four chapbooks, which include Fevers and Clocks (March Street Press, 2006) and The Traffic in Women (Dancing Girl Press, 2006). A Pushcart Prize nominee in 2006, her poems and reviews have appeared in many publications, which include The Mid-America Poetry Review, Redactions: Poetry and Poetics, Rattle, Janus Head, The Midwest Book Review, The Arabesques Review, and others. Recent awards include residencies at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, the Centrum Foundation, and the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts. 

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