All posts tagged: homes

IF THE HOUSE…an arresting collection of poetry that begs the questions of obsessions, motifs, memories, flaws, and so much more–MOLLY SPENCER ON this plus how poems ‘talk’ to each other

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By Leslie Lindsay  IF THE HOUSE…a lyrical and emotive collection of poetry about the most basic structures of creation and recreation. ~WRITERS INTERVIEWING WRITERS|ALWAYS WITH A BOOK~ POETRY FRIDAY Well-known spaces of homes are examined with lush and precise prose in IF THE HOUSE by Molly Spencer (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019), and being a ‘house person,’ I found myself completely absorbed. Here, we navigate the experiences of land and home, person and family, the cycles of nature, as well as ordinary and extravagant things–a kitchen table, a memory, the sky. It’s complex, it’s metaphorical, it’s all things good poetry should be. And like all good poetry, it is best savored and read aloud, and revisited–like an old homestead–often. Molly Spencer’s poetry has appeared in various well-known and recognized literary journals. She is a poetry editor for Rumpus and this collection won the 2019 Brittingham Prize in Poetry. Please join me in welcoming the lovely and talented Molly Spencer back to the author interview series. Leslie Lindsay: Molly, welcome back. I so loved IF THE HOUSE and HINGE (see …

Poet MOLLY SPENCEr talks about her astonishing, award-winning collection, HINGE; serious illness, the body, growing up in orchards, how obsessions can often lead us to our writing material, PLUS the structure of roofs.

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By Leslie Lindsay  Myth, legend, landscape…lush and razor-sharp lines…HINGE is exactly that: revealing and concealing–sometimes squeaky–moments in time. ~WRITERS INTERVIEWING WRITERS|ALWAYS WITH A BOOK~  POETRY FRIDAY Aside from the arresting cover, HINGE by Molly Spencer (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, 2020) is a gorgeous meditation of motherhood, the passage of time, a stunted world–in terms of all–land, home, marriage, and body. There’s a great deal of tension and then well-earned release, the world and imagery rich in details and texture, about creation and recreation, told in a simply elegant, yet mournful voice. I have a wealth of images trapped in my mind from the words–and worlds–created within these pages. It’s about space and homes and how they all tie together, but also seasons and cycles and interiority. HINGE is the perfect read for the bleaker days of late fall, into winter, as we naturally fold within ourselves. Molly Spencer’s poetry has appeared in various well-known and recognized literary journals. She is a poetry editor for Rumpus, and this collection won the Crab Orchard Series Open Competition in Poetry 2019. Please join me …

What do we do when it all goes wrong? we can read books about home; AND YET THEY WERE HAPPY by Helen Phillips & Virginia Lee Burton’s THE LITTLE HOUSE can help us find the light

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By Leslie Lindsay  Home. It’s a place we go back to again and again. And it’s always open.  ~WEDNESDAYS WITH WRITERS|SPECIAL EDITION~ As I write this, on a blistering day, one in which the sky burns blue and the walls provide structure and stability, I am shaken. The events of the last several months have been enough to stun and awaken. The last few days have ripped the floor from under me, taken my breath away. My children have opened delicate conversations seeking solace and understanding. Social media is revealing a surge of activity in movements and messages. In the global world, protests are happening. You know this. I’m not sure I can possibly say anything that hasn’t already been said. Do I share another author interview? Normalcy, escape, reliability, there’s a value in that, right? But the world is hurting. When we hurt, we seek comfort. For many of us, that is home. In my town, the curfew for all individuals has been extended another night.  We all must be tucked safely in our …

Erica Bauermeister, author of THE SCENT KEEPER turns to memoir in her fascinating exploration of renovating a 1909 Foursquare in HOUSE LESSONS, plus art, writing, empty-nests, and more

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By Leslie Lindsay  A meditation of space, home, and what it means to be a mother, a wife, and a writer in this transformative memoir. ~WEDNESDAYS WITH WRITERS|ALWAYS WITH A BOOK~ Can a home be cathartic? I think so. Can a home teach us life lessons? Absolutely! I know we’re not supposed to fall in love with a book based on its cover but O.M.G.! And the title: HOUSE LESSONS: Renovating a Life (Sasquatch Books, March 24 2020)…AND it’s a memoir? Sold. Erica Bauermeister is the author of mostly recently THE SCENT KEEPER, but has written other books, too. HOUSE LESSONS is her first memoir. This is a tale of love and family, hope and potential, all arising quite literally from a pile of junk. The 1909 American Four Square sat in eccentric Port Townsend, WA, not even for sale with the author and her husband stumbled upon it and knew it was ‘the one.’ Previously owned by a hoarder, Bauermeister and her family go about purchasing the home and cleaning it out, rebuilding the foundation, and renovating the interior …

Therese Anne Fowler’s stunning new fiction, A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD, will leave you breathless, questioning everything–it’s a must read.

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By Leslie Lindsay Hugely gripping contemporary novel that examines the American dream through the lens of two families living side-by-side in an idyllic neighborhood, but that summer their lives change irrevocably. ~WeekEND Reading SPOTLIGHT!| ALWAYS WITH A BOOK~ Five GIANT stars to A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD by Therese Anne Fowler (St. Martin’s Press, March 10 2020). I cannot say enough about this book. It’s emotional, it’s timely, it’s affecting, it’s thought-provoking, it’s urgent. Read this book, you won’t regret it. Here’s what drew me: Neighbors, neighborhoods, trees, houses, families. Suburbia. But there’s so much more to this story. So much. Don’t take my word for it. Jodi Piccoult says this of A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD: “Therese Anne Fowler has taken the ingredients of racism, justice, and conservative religion and concocted a feast of a read: compelling, heartbreaking, and inevitable. I finished A Good Neighborhood in a single sitting. Yes, it’s that good.” And if that’s not enough, Kirkus gives it a starred review and Library Journal does, too. Many others are calling it ‘speechless,’ and ‘powerful,’ a ‘tour de force.’ …

In Material That Matters, I share what I imagine my mother’s life was like as a newlywed, her dreams & hopes and how, when she was in her thirties, she had a ‘nervous breakdown’

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By Leslie Lindsay A daughter recollects her mother before she was her mother; her creativity, and ultimate psychosis. It’s about motherhood and mystery, how she fits into this intricate network, and more. ~MEMOIR MONDAY~ This is my mother before she was my mother. She had a thrumming, electric energy, as if her skin was embedded with diamonds, glistening with potential. In the 1970s when she met my father, she dreamed of happily-ever-after, flower boxes and flat driveways filled with Big-Wheels and scooters, the giddy shrieks of children. Together, they purchased a plot of land in a new subdivision, one that had a name like Southern Hills or Southhall or maybe it was Westfield, a moniker resembling cardinal directions. Something in her peripheral vision reflected mirth and yet, darkness. Her blue eyes conveyed intelligence, but sadness, too. She planned everything, prepared herself to be a homemaker, an artist, a mother: a sewing machine, canvases for the walls, macramé plant holders dangling from hooks on the ceiling. She culled through Butterick patterns at Cloth World and emerged with …

The most unusual, surreal, disturbingly real read I’ve ever experienced. Leanne Shapton on her collage-style fragmented writing, houses, more in GUEST BOOK: Ghost Stories

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By Leslie Lindsay A one-of-a-kind, truly unique reading experience, GUESTBOOK: Ghost Stories will alight and frighten and also leave a deep residue begging for another look.   Since publishing her first book of drawings 15 years ago, Leanne Shapton has amassed a devoted following among critics and fans alike. A ground-breaking visionary, and multi-talented artist with an illustrious career in design and publishing, Shapton is unparalleled in her ability to weave entirely original narratives out of images and text. Her earlier works have earned her National Book Critics Circle award for her illustrated memoir, SWIMMING STUDIES and WOMEN IN CLOTHES was a NYT bestseller. Now, blisteringly original artist, Leanne Shapton’s GUESTBOOK (Riverhead, March 2019) isn’t quite an art book, isn’t quite a traditional narrative, but here, she effortlessly and brilliantly combines so many different art forms into one highly intriguing experience. “Shapton uses ephemera not to catalog our social ills but to collect evidence of well-heeled lives at risk of being forgotten or brushed aside. The effect is diffuse and eerie, more often mood than assertion or …

What happens when you assemble a cast of boisterous, haphazard family members at a wedding? Maybe dysfunction. Leah Hager Cohen talks about this and more in STRANGERS AND COUSINS

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By Leslie Lindsay  Sprawling multi-generational tale weaving contemporary views of love, marriage, family, birth, death, and secrets in a modern language, but with a timeless feel.   Leah Hager Cohen is the author of ten books, and has been recognized by People Magazine as a “masterful talent,” celebrated for her “keen insight,” (Bustle), and The New York Times says she is “eloquent…stunningly empathetic.” This is my first read from Leah Hager Cohen and STRANGERS AND COUSINS (Riverhead, May 14 2019) breathes magic into the simple, but not easy Erlend family. Cohen’s prose is glittering. There’s an elegance and timelessness to the way she strings words together, leaving me wholly enraptured.  Fans of Anne Tyler, Lorna Landvik, Elizabeth Berg, and Ann Packer will delight in this richly rendered tale. STRANGERS AND COUSINS is about a wedding. But that’s just a small microcosm of the layers and layers of uncomfortable truths in the Erlend family. There’s resistance to change (a new Jewish subgroup is moving into the community threatening a sense of cohesion); an elderly aunt with secrets of her own, a …

Elizabeth Garber talks about her relationship with her architect father, Modern architecture, mental health, & how poetry shaped her as an author

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By Leslie Lindsay  Propulsive, poetic, and courageous, Elizabeth Garber’s IMPLOSION is the best kind of memoir: you experience right along with her and leave it feeling a sense of renewal.  But that’s not to say everything in IMPLOSION (SWP, June 2018) is glorious; it’s not. This is a subtle, intense exploration of a young woman’s survival through psychological oppression, as she (and her mother and two brothers) are raised in a glass house, a prison, constructed of her father’s mental illness. Woodie Garber was a famous Modernist architect, designing structures that would rise from the earth resembling glass cubes. He builds the family’s home–a glass house–in a privileged area of Cincinnati in the 1960s. The family leaves behind the 1870s Victorian where the Garber family has resided for many generations. But it’s not all sunshine and mirth in that glass house. At first, Woodie just seems eccentric. He’s brilliant and bursting with ideas. He loves jazz records and good wine, racing cars, and art. Elizabeth has a connection with her father–they share many of the same interests and she so wants to …

Gorgeously stark, yet lush poetry collection about homes, architecture, design, & more by Middlebury College President Laurie Patton

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By Leslie Lindsay  A deeply moving and stirring collection of poems about houses and homes inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s 1958 classic, THE POETICS OF SPACE. Houses, homes, dwellings…they all have a mystical experience for me. They may be composed of timber and hardware, plaster and bricks and glass, but they hold truths deeper and darker still. A house may live only once, but it encompasses many lives.  HOUSE CROSSING (Station Hill, May 2018) is a “simple poetry of houses,” as author Laurie Patton says. Ultimately, she was inspired by the “geometry of intimacy” in urbane, basic architecture–a corner, the end of a hallway, a window, the attic. While the 32 short poems in the collection are a study in brevity, they pack such a soft-focused punch, going deep and leaving the reader with a disquieting contemplation. Titles are simple, but oh how they had me swooning: eaves, cupola, well, demolition, grave.  I don’t mean to be glib when I say these poems are haunting. Patton’s work dwells in the white space, the what-might-have-been. One reads the words and imagines a scene, but …