“Try picking drops of the ocean with tweezers. Try expressing your grief, rage, fear, love within the tiny, out-of-breath, syllable-stingy form of haiku. Natalie Parker-Lawrence’s poems, concocted from the rushing, halting words of women caregivers of veterans, honor the essence. An image, a sound, a memory, a nightmare: capture it: in so few words.”
–Margaret Edson, author of Wit and winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
“Natalie Parker-Lawrence’s book of hybrid haiku, householes, strikes a delightful balance between delicacy and power. The poet also walks the tightrope between the personal and the universal, and she does so in such a way that the reader follows anxiously along, breathless and captivated. At turns gentle, at times brutal, but always poignant, Parker-Lawrence has the gift of the simple line that says much. I hope this book portends the start of a long career of verse.”
–Corey Mesler, author of Cock-a-Hoop, and Take the Longing from my Tongue
“In short, impactful verse, Natalie Parker-Lawrence, shares the poignant and often gritty stories of Veteran Caregivers from around the country. The traditional haiku form evokes feelings about the natural world using a structure of stanzas and syllables. As if by necessity, Parker-Lawrence departs from the traditional haiku to share first-hand, vivid and heart-breaking accounts of those who’ve survived war and those entangled in its aftermath. Their explosive, shattering and gut-wrenching experiences refuse to be confined by poetic tradition and structure. No one touched by war remains whole. This collection has transformative power, taking us from despair to hope, if only in the knowledge that we are not alone.”
–Virginia Bryan is a retired attorney, arts advocate and free-lance writer. Her work appears in Distinctly Montana, Montana Magazine, Native Peoples and Yellowstone Valley Woman.
“householes stitches the weightless Haiku to the gravity of all that proceeds war with thread borrowed from the women yoked in the collateral damage of the military-industrial complex.”
–C. (Christine) W. Lockhart, PhD: LT, USCG (retired), Disabled Veteran & Caregiver, author of Blanket of Stars: Thru-Hiking the Camino de Santiago and Walking with Buddha: Pilgrimage on the Shikoku 88-Temple Trail
“In householes, Natalie Parker-Lawrence, uses the hybrid haiku form, inspired by the haiku poems Richard Wright produced in the last year of his life, and characterized by rhythmic economy, precision, and surprise. The poems are conversational, snatches of things the women said about their disturbing experiences, selected, arranged, and performed with a spring or turn at the end. The result is the poems linger with authentic power and speak of lives worth knowing.”
–Marcia Aldrich, author of Companion to an Unknown Story
“These poems are portals into the lives and harsh realities (the pills and whiskey and broken bodies) faced by female caregivers. The voices are raw and intimate, and made all the more real by flashes of startling tenderness. In this stunning debut collection, Natalie Parker-Lawrence’s miracle is her ability to conjure entire worlds with a handful of words.”
–Sonja Livingston, author of Ghostbread and The Virgin of Prince Street
“Deeply moving… often tender, painful, sometimes sassy and occasionally funny. Always raw and wise and honest. Some of it felt vaguely familiar. Much of it evoked sorrow and compassion for the lives represented to highlight the deeper challenges, emotions, of the Caregiver/Veteran experience. In many ways it felt very different from my own experiences. Ours, it appears, was a kinder, gentler journey. His PTSD manifested itself in quieter, more subtle ways. As did his dementia. There were definitely moments, increasing as he moved closer to crossing over, when he’d wake confused…still in a dream state…awaiting deployment orders from a Sergeant or some higher up. Often he’d see a young boy running thru a room (his younger self? I could only speculate). Because, the experiences captured felt, for the most part, darker, more painful than what I experienced with dad (with a couple of exceptions …ie, Ringo? … I wondered if the Vet had been a musician… loved that they’d called each other “Brother”)
–Chris Ciccarello, daughter and Caregiver of WWII Veteran
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