Abstract
This article examines the centrality of heat as a poetic image and thematic preoccupation in the poetry of Kevin Hart, described by Harold Bloom as “the most outstanding Australian poet of his generation.” While Hart is often labelled a religious poet, this study foregrounds the intensely physical and sensual dimensions of his work, particularly the ways in which heat functions as a multivalent image linking Brisbane, summer, adolescence, sexuality, and spirituality. Drawing on close readings of poems from Wicked Heat, Flame Tree, and other collections, the article traces how Hart’s immigrant experience of arriving in subtropical Brisbane from England profoundly shaped his poetic imagination, intertwining poetry, heat, summer, and sex from his earliest days in Australia. The analysis demonstrates that heat in Hart’s poetry serves variously as oppressive force, religious metaphor, erotic catalyst, and sensual pleasure, always inextricably connected to his formative years in Brisbane.
Keywords: Kevin Hart, Australian poetry, heat, Brisbane, sensuality, religious poetry, physicality
Heat and the Brisbane Experience
The renowned American literary critic Harold Bloom declares that Kevin Hart is the “most outstanding Australian poet of his generation” and “One of the major living poets in the English language.” Hart was born in Essex, England, in 1954, and spent his early childhood in East London. His family moved to Brisbane, Australia, in 1966, when he was eleven years old. Academically, Hart has “taken up a position at the crossroads where philosophy, literature and theology intersect” (Kane 102). Hart’s first book of poetry, The Departure, was published in 1978. Nine collections have followed to date: The Lines of the Hand: Poems 1976-1979 (1981); Your Shadow: (Poems 1980-83) (1984); Peniel (1991); New and Selected Poems (1995); Dark Angel (1996); Wicked Heat (1999); Flame Tree (2001); The Impossible (2003); and Young Rain (2008).
Hart is often labelled a religious poet, and the bulk of the criticism of his poetry focuses on the religious, spiritual and philosophical aspects of his work. However, Hart is also an intensely physical and sensual poet, one whose work examines the effects of the physical environment on humans, explicitly addresses physical aspects of romantic relationships, and uses physical actions and sensations as metaphors for spiritual communion. In his review of Wicked Heat, Christian Sheppard contends that the “unifying image of the collection … is heat … a universal image, one that conjures up an atmosphere” (1). The Australian critic and poet David McCooey includes heat, the sun and “the north” (referring to Brisbane) in his expanded version of Gary Catalano’s catalogue of Hart’s recurring symbols.
In Flame Tree, Hart’s long-standing preoccupation with heat is readily apparent. Despite spending just six years or so living in Brisbane before attending the Australian National University in the much cooler climate of Canberra, growing up in Brisbane affected Hart profoundly, and he has written dozens of poems about that experience. Wicked Heat contains at least a dozen poems that deal directly with Hart’s Brisbane years, while Flame Tree contains more than forty poems that make direct reference to heat.
Heat as Oppressive Force
The centrality of heat in Hart’s poetry is evident from the beginning of his published body of work. In “The Streets of Brisbane,” the speaker warns an arriving traveller, “you will taste the rusting air / Of Roma Street” (5-6), implying that the hot air is thick with disintegrating matter. In Hart’s poetry, heat and humidity are commonly depicted as oppressive and the cause of lethargy. In the prose poem, “The Clocks of Brisbane,” Hart writes of “those wrestling in bed with the heat.” The heat persists long after the sun has gone down, and remains a force to be struggled with throughout the night.
In “That Bad Summer,” the air has “gone thick and bad” due to the stifling heat and humidity. The hot, thick atmosphere, combined with the lethargy created by the intense heat, makes the simplest activities extremely difficult. The heat affects even the physical structures of the city: the windows of the bedroom “have begun to sweat,” and the numbers “peel off the Town Hall clock.” In “Membranes,” Hart writes of “walls going all wavy in the heat” (20). The heat has the power to distort both the physical world and the speaker’s perception of it, lending the heat’s immense power a God-like quality.
Heat as Religious Metaphor
Critics often classify Hart as a religious poet, and he regularly uses heat as a metaphor when addressing religious and spiritual questions. In “Membranes,” he writes that “Heat sits in judgement over everyone, / O Lord, this summer night whose rising up / And going down give cruel sleep at best” (6-8). Hart also describes heat in religious terms in “Your Shadow’s Songs”: “Who knows if God will come to you / As fire, or as a woman’s touch” (VI. 9-10). Here heat, God and sex are all bound up together.
Heat, Love, and Sexuality
Love and lust are often associated with heat in Hart’s poetry, both the heat of summer and the heat generated by passion. In “Her Name,” Hart depicts the Poincianas as both the recipient and the generator of heat; they thrive on “wet heat,” they “burn” and flare. The Brisbane summer heat is intense; it is “heavy,” it “knocks you flat,” “hangs around all night” and “bruises souls.” In “Four Poems,” the heat and sleeplessness of summer are intertwined with sexual love: “That entire summer / We made love, and now she’s gone / I still cannot sleep” (7-9). “Nineteen Songs” also mingles heat, love and sexual desire. For Hart, the fertility of both the natural world and humankind are inseparable from heat.
Heat as Sensual Pleasure
Perhaps the central poem of Hart’s 1999 collection Wicked Heat is the aptly titled “Heat.” While Hart once again depicts the heat as intense and oppressive, the “young blokes” in the poem clearly love it. The heat is “wild,” it strums the horizon, the air is “burnt,” and the “old iron sheds” are “blazing,” yet the young working men clearly revel in the heat, licking it “off their lips” and tasting it “in the grass stalks.” Heat dominates the environment, yet it is also something to be desired, a sensual pleasure. The poem also contains a hint of religion with the use of phrases such as “o lord” and “Sweet Jesus”; Hart thus combines many of his most common uses of heat into a single poem and gives his lyric a Gospel flavour.
Conclusion
An examination of Hart’s body of work reveals that heat is an essential component of his poetry and life experience, whether he is writing about Brisbane, summer, his childhood, religion, love, sex or all of those themes at once. One gets the impression that for Hart, a life without heat would be no life at all. Jacques Khalip writes that Hart’s poetry “is most remarkable for its sustained interest in the simplicity of experience” (201). By using universal themes and direct, lyrical language, Hart is able to connect his personal experiences with those of his audience and create timeless poetry that will be read and enjoyed by future generations, whether fellow Australians or not.
Works Cited
- Brown, Lachlan. “Exploring the Shadow of Your Shadow.” Spectres, Screens, Shadows, Mirrors. Eds. Tanya Dalziell and Paul Genoni. Special Issue of JASAL (2007): 106-116.
- Catalano, Gary. “The Weight of Things: The Poetry of Kevin Hart.” Overland 104 (Sep.1986): 23-26.
- Hart, Kevin. Wicked Heat. Sydney, NSW: Paper Bark Press, 1999.
- ---. Flame Tree: Selected Poems. Highgreen, Northumberland, UK: Bloodaxe Books, 2002.
- Kane, Paul. “Philosopher-Poets: John Koethe and Kevin Hart.” Raritan 21.1 (Summer 2001): 94-113.
- “Kevin Hart.” AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource. 30 Sep. 2008. 28 Dec. 2008.
- Khalip, Jacques. “A Difficult Attentiveness.” Rev. of Flame Tree, by Kevin Hart. Antipodes 16.2 (Dec. 2002): 200-201.
- Kinsella, John. “Kevin Hart: Melbourne, 22 October, 1995.” John Kinsella: Poet, Novelist, Critic, Publisher, and Journal Editor. 28 Dec. 2008.
- McCooey, David. “‘Secret Truths’: The Poetry of Kevin Hart.” Southerly 55.4 (Summer 1995-1996): 109-21.
- Mitchell, Paul. “Tracing Religion in the Poetry of Kevin Hart.” Antipodes 21.2 (Dec. 2007): 158-65.
- Sheppard, Christian. “Wicked Heat (Book Review).” Chicago Review 46.1 (2000): 4 pp.
- Spinks, Lee. “‘Sketching the Horizon’: An Interview with Kevin Hart.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature 35.2 (2000): 5-14.