Elizabeth Jones Hanley's deceptively simple poems collect images, echoes, and memories of a family of three generations together and their quiet life in a small town in Missouri.
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This collection of tender poems focuses on family--apparently at least three generations together--and their quiet life in the country or small town. Several poems celebrate food, one in the form of a recipe for scones, one the process of making tea, one the joy of eating freshly baked bread on a snowy day, well aware of all the work it represents. Some poems have a fey quality, as in "Hay Stones," where haystacks are compared to standing stones and the reader is urged to dance among them because, in italics, "They will not stay."
Most of these offerings are brief and deceptively simple--no calculated obscurity here, no game playing. Hanley's touch is so delicate that some might at first consider her work light, but it stays in our minds, if only for amusing image, as when the cat rolls off a chair in her sleep and stalks away with body language saying clearly, "I meant to do that." Memorable for other reasons are the portraits of older people who seem to be our ! own, respected, understood, and well loved: the aged woman in the nursing home who no longer remembers her descendants; the woman dusting her collection of figurines as she has done for decades; another elderly lady mending lace.
Perception throughout is remarkable for such a young writer. She must have spent a great deal of time with her elders. But some poems are her own experience, as when the family carefully packs an elaborate cake for a reunion and while all caution each other about everything, the object of their concern somehow gets left on top of the car.
Illustrations are from Hanley's own family archives, a wedding couple from probably a century ago, a young woman in perfect 20s hairstyle, a little girl posing in a carefully made Bo-Peep costume. The cover picture is best of all: three pretty young women pose in fluffy turn-of-the-century summer outfits by a vine laden porch. Beside them, in obvious confidence that his presence is required, sits a nondescrip! t terrier. That one endearing little detail is an index to what is found inside. Perhaps it also is an index to Hanley.
Review by Joan Gilbert -- Ozarks Mountaineer
About the Author
Elizabeth Jones Hanley is a novelist and poet who lives with her husband and son in Rolla, Missouri. She is a member of the Rolla Area Writers Guild, writes a weekly ArtFact co-produced by ArtsRolla and Public Radio KUMR, and is Associate Editor of The Mid-America Poetry Review. Her short story, "War Wounds," won First Place in the 1999 ArtsRolla Writing Contest.
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First Sentence:
Soft rain beyond the window dims the warm room. Read the first page New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Soft rain beyond the window dims the warm room. Read the first page New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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