Close Menu
  • Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER ONLINE
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Craft
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
      • Bookshelf
    • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Poem of the Month
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
MER – Mom Egg Review
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube Tumblr Threads
  • Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER ONLINE
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Craft
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
      • Bookshelf
    • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Poem of the Month
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
NEWSLETTER
MER – Mom Egg Review
You are at:Home » The Lives We Live in Houses by Pauletta Hansel

The Lives We Live in Houses by Pauletta Hansel

0
By Mom Egg Review on July 15, 2012 Book Reviews

the-lives-we-live-in-housesReview by Moira Richards

 – The scent of summer clings
to dampened soil; we long to turn
it under, let the living nestle down

beneath the leaf mulch, as we, inside our houses,
turn on lamps against November,
wait again for spring.

And so ends the last poem in this collection – a collection of poems about a family and about love; a collection of love poems for family members present, and family members alive only inside warm houses of memory. In The Lives We Live in Houses, Pauletta Hansel burrows beneath the leaf mulch of daily life and draws to herself, remembrances of her parents, her husband, her children – as if, against the cold dark night, she were turning up the

lights in one house, then another,
flickering on from room to room,

Relationships, of course, remain in a constant flux over the decades and Hansel conveys these metamorphoses in a delicate sestina compassed round the words garden; own; daughter; still; mother; lost. Like all the poetry in the collection this poem too, is gentle, wry, humourous, and suffused with love.

The Lives We Live in Houses, by Pauletta Hansel
Wind Publications, 2011

 


Moira Richards, author, editor, publisher with Norman Darlington of the annual Journal of Renga & Renku: www.darlingtonrichards.com

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleA Part of Ruby’s World by Michael Bennett
Next Article The Night She Slept With A Bear by Holly Anderson
Leave A Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

September 13, 2025

“We bring you here to see dead things–” A poetry folio of the supernatural in motherhood

September 13, 2025

Diannely Antigua – ORCHARD REVISITED

September 13, 2025

Erin Armstrong – THE WEIGHT OF BODIES

September 13, 2025

Sara Ries Dziekonski – INVISIBLE

September 13, 2025

Lindsay Kellar-Madsen – MILK & MARROW

September 13, 2025

Barbara O’Dair – MONSTER

September 13, 2025

Tzynya Pinchback – MENARCHE

September 13, 2025

Amanda Quaid – FARRUCA

September 13, 2025

Joani Reese – FEVER DREAM

September 13, 2025

Nancy Ring – HOW BRIGHTLY

Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube Tumblr Threads
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Submit
  • Contact
MER - Mom Egg Review
PO Box 9037, Bardonia, NY 10954
Contact [email protected]

Copyright © 2025 MER and Mom Egg Review

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.