In the Low Houses

By Heather Dobbins

"In speech that whispers so close to the ear, it is as if we have been acquainted with its texture and timbre since time memorial. Here is poetry of immense personal and social vision, highlighting the mystical aspects of human tenderness, love, longing, regret, and grief as observed in broken as well as whole relationships, and indeed, in the very earth we walk upon. It is such frailty and awareness that most enlivens Dobbins's poetry. In the Low Houses is a gorgeous collection of poems, if nothing for the portrait of a woman who unflinchingly stares into the great crevasse of her life and beholds a portrait of herself in vibrant language and rhythms that are hers and hers only." -Major Jackson, author of Holding Company and two other collections of poetry and the winner of multiple awards including the Cave Canem Poetry Prize "In writing so nuanced and lovely that it wraps you fully inside it, Heather Dobbins manages that difficult emotional balancing act, to carry you across a tight wire where both innocence and experience are fused. The desires of youth merge with the poignancy of loss in age and death to make this book a tense, exciting and beautiful journey." -John Bensko, winner of the 2013 Anita Claire Scharf Award for Visitations and the Yale Series for Younger Poets Award for Green Soldiers "Heather Dobbins knows how to croon the blues in lyric poems that sizzle and stay with us. The 'secret texture' to these intimate songs is created by love, humor, and resistance. We readers are allowed to glimpse forbidden feelings, to trespass beyond cozy domestic interiors. The book is a triumph of clarity and complexity, flesh and feelings made word." -Marilyn Kallet, Director of the University of Tennessee Creative Writing Program and author of sixteen books, most recently, The Love That Moves Me

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0615923674
• ISBN13: 9780615923673
• Release Date: January 2014
• Publisher: Alabaster Leaves Publishing
• Length: 76 Pages
• Weight: 0.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.2" x 6.0"