The poems in Mary Beth Hines's first collection, Winter at a Summer House, strike a wonderful balance between narratives of everyday experience and a pristine, pure poetic imagination. Always rhythmically diverse, most of the time mellifluous, and often intense, Hines's poetry vividly paints the life of a modern self-made woman, with her worries and obligations, her family, and her dreams. In response to the heroine's world, this poetry, never static, vibrates with all sorts of emotions: love, friendship, youthful infatuations, amorousness, jealousy, altruism. As a result, the book gives its reader all the pleasures of a novel-and of lyric novelty.
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(@BooksKelsay, 4 November 2021, ebook, 102 pages, copy from the publisher via @PoeticBookTours, #BlogTour 14 December)
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This is a new poet for me. I enjoy finding new poets so was looking forward to Winter at Summer House. I enjoyed the poems in this collection very much. They were beautifully written and vivid. Many of the poems are clearly personal but touch one universal subject and ideas like love, family life and memory. The images used in each poem are impressive at times. I particularly enjoyed First Born, Ritual, Swim Meet, Destroying Angels and A Distant Mirror.
