"The Lives We Live in Houses"

One snowy Sunday afternoon a month ago, I spent time in the Joseph Beth bookstore in Crestview, Kentucky and happened across a slim volume of poetry that has been haunting me. It is The Lives We Live in Houses, by Pauletta Hansel, a poet and native of eastern Kentucky, who now lives and practices her art in the Cincinnati area. Hansel's poems in this book are all short enough to be printed on one page, so it is excellent for dipping into whenever there is a free moment. I had read several while standing at the Kentucky authors section of the bookstore. Since then I find myself reading one or two before going to sleep or before starting preparations for a meal, which is when I have contemplative time.

I was attracted initially by the title, for I knew then that I would be moving into a new house in the near future. I had been packing up belongings for weeks and planning where to locate them in my new home, and in that ritual of sorting, selecting, packing, and wondering I was reliving the lives I had lived in the many houses I have occupied during my lifetime.

But it is not houses per se that Hansel writes about; it is the lives lived therein, the various persons that we remember, long for, are, and become. Many poems evoke her childhood and early experiences growing up; "Doppelgänger" posits an unusual and shocking origin; "Class Lessons" shows the long reach of a teacher's thoughtless comment.

In a section titled "Blood Line," she remembers her parents with "My Father's Ghost" and the humorous and touching "Boxes," and "Becoming My Mother." Other intriguing sections called "Dance Lessons" and "The Stepmother in Fact and Fiction" reveal an interesting life made more so by her consideration of it and the word images she creates.

As I now unpack the boxes of things that I have brought from the many lives I have lived in previous houses, I read Pauletta Hansel and gather the courage to contemplate and the acceptance of remembering.