The Truth of Houses

At once wise and achingly at a loss, Ann Scowcrofts The Truth of Houses is an elegant and honest debut collection. While very intimateeven startlingly intimate at timesthe voices of these poems are constantly taking a step backward, wrestling for a measure of distance and perspective. Reading them, we eavesdrop on the uncovering of a personal vernacular that might allow the present to be better lived; we have the sense of overhearing a particular yet eerily familiar inner strugglea struggle for insight, for an equanimity with which both narrator and fortunate reader might re-enter life anew. All of which is to say: the houses arent fooledthe houses know the five truthsThe truth of light: you will see before you understandThe truth of motion: escape is an illusionThe truth of trees: your busy life will dissolve into the soilThe truth of windows: what protects can also maimThe truth of peace:despite all the other truthsknowing will come to you wearing one hundred facescontain you as once you contained your own blood - from The Truth of Houses