The Pink House/ Rising Up Singing by Tanya K. Young

The vivid, imagistic poems in Tanya Young’s debut collection, “The Pink House”, chronicle her childhood and emotional landscapes growing up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, “Where the seas wild rolling/Rocked the light/And the shells sang so sweetly.” In the title poem, “The Pink House”, the poet informs us: “The house where I grew up still stands.” But time, weather and neglect reveal, “The pink patio chocked with weeds/Rusted empty hooks/Where the hammock once hung.” The poem ends with unexpected foreshadowing, “Before history started to hurt.” Family members, the family Pontiac, an old dog, seaboard weather and a hurricane that turns the Atlantic “Lead grey” contribute to the poet’s striking memories of her girlhood. But it is her mother and their layered relationship that is central to the book. In “Small Flames” she recalls her mother frosting her pink birthday cake then lighting the eight candles. “Both of us feel a storm brewing/Sugar in the cusp of danger.” The poet’s remarkable skills of imagery, symbolism, brevity and metaphor are present in each poem of this extraordinary first collection.

–Gail Ghai, Poet and author of Painted Words-color thesaurus poster, Surfaces of the Map, Dividing by Stones, Aerodynamics-chapbooks

What a gift to find a voice so distinctively representative of place — the Outer Banks — sung to our senses so that we feel as if we would know The Pink House to drive by it, to recognize it’s cracked pastel exterior and rusty hammock hooks. But even better, Young’s rich evocation opens a mythical and lyrical world where her memory lives, reanimates, and communes with her people, the land, and the magic of witness and becoming. Here is a poet who can cast a spell, tell a story, and borrow your heart just long enough to make you believe that her uncle really could fly. If this is what she can do with her past, imagine where Young’s vision takes us next.

–Bubba Henson, author of Toy Army Men