Customer Reviews

Shimming the Glass House

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4 star:		(1)
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I rarely reread literature anymore than I watch a movie twice; but, in all honesty, I read some of these poems to guests who come to my house, colleagues, family and family over the phone. The words grasp emotions that aren't necessarily ones you want to hold on to, but Wallace's expression of the emotion, somehow, creates an elevated and better perspective; one that allows the world to be okay, the way it is, through an understanding that is a gift from the author. Bravo!

Helen Pruitt Wallace, a classmate of mine (C'80) at The University of the South in Sewanee TN, has made an opulent debut with Shimming the Glass House. The 57 poems (20 previously recognized with awards and publication) range in form from free verse to several fixed forms including sestina, ottava rima, (primarily Petrarchan) sonnets and what I like to call hidden sonnets--14 line poems whose argument follows that of a Petrarchan or Shakespearian sonnet but that omit some strict aspect of the form, usually the rhyme scheme. She also demonstrates a gift for inventing new forms, their inspiration growing directly from both her subject and argument. Many poems carry either dedications or epigraphs and a few enjoy the effective modern poetical device of using the title as the poem's first line. She takes great pleasure in customizing quotations from poets like Jesus ("In my mother's house are many pots"), Elizabeth Bishop, W. H. Auden ("Auden's right about disaster, the way it often finds us / in the ordinary.") and W. B. Yeats, and she is obviously immersed, in her teaching life I assume, in Elizabethan rhetoric and Victorian vocabulary. The result is a rich smorgasbord of poems, most of which draw their inspiration from intensely personal observations of modern life, nature and work. Her success grows directly from her passion for specificity of details, welcoming the reader into her experience (many poems start with the first-person singular or plural pronoun)--which is somehow appropriate to the Southern belle she is.

Her poems are beautiful and fragile, like a glass house, or life. A wonderful read.

This is poetry from the heart that bears reading and reading
over again - sorrowful at times and full of fun at others....

Bravo to Helen Pruitt. These poems put you in touch with the feelings and emotions that make life meaningful. Each poem will call you to read it again and again. They speak to every reader, yet are so deeply personal that you will miss the author when your reading is done.