This anthology is more than a gathering of poems and poets. It is a convergence of paths, a literary labyrinth, and an honoring of the written word. Summer Home Review is the work of nurses, firemen, teachers, healers, soldiers, lawyers, singers, union members, and play writes. While it is true that the poets/writers in this anthology have all participated in the same workshop and that some of them are Vietnam veterans, their poems are neither "war" poetry nor writing that is of "workshop" quality. All the poems in Summer Home Review have an edge. Poems by Dorinda Foley Wegener may delight while poems by Gary Raffery may infuriate or sadden but all the work is compelling. Through the book you can trace the literary bonds of the poets and the influences of their poet-teachers like Bruce Weigl, Fred Marchant, Yusef Komunyakaa, Lady Borton, Bill Ehrhart, and Martha Collins. Like travelers in a labyrinth, the poets included in Summer Home Review have reached the center and, with its publication are making their way back to the beginning. This book begins for you at the center. If you choose, you may walk with them. In between the lines they have left for you sacred pieces of themselves. Enjoy the journey.

"The writer believes strongly in the ability to use words to persuade the reader, to evoke emotions, to extract humor, and to entertain.  Summer Home Review brings this revelation to anyone who will read and listen." Richard Berred Ouellette

Summer Home Review is more than a gathering of poems and poets. It is a convergence of paths, a literary labyrinth, and an honoring of the written word. While it is true that some of the poets are Vietnam veterans, their poems are not necessarily "war" poems. The reader will find that poets other than veterans write about battles. Though the poets/writers in this anthology have all participated in the same workshop, this book is neither "war" poetry nor writing that is of "workshop" quality.

All the poems in Summer Home Review have an edge. Poems by Dorinda Foley Wegener will delight some and poems by Gary Rafferty may infuriate or sadden others but all the poems and stories are compelling.

Through the book you can trace the literary bonds and friendships of the poets and find the influences of their poet-teachers like Bruce Weigl, Fred Marchant, Yusef Komunyakaa, Lady Borton, Bill Ehrhart, Martha Collins and others.

Like travelers in a labyrinth, the poets and writers included in Summer Home Review have reached the center and, with publication of this book are making their way back to the beginning. This book begins for you at the center. The editor, poet Jacqueline M. Loring, invites you to walk back with them. "In between the lines." she says, "they have left for you sacred pieces of themselves. Enjoy the journey.

"The writer believes strongly in the ability to use words to persuade the reader, to evoke emotions, to extract humor, and to entertain.  Summer Home Review brings this revelation to anyone who will read and listen." Richard Berred Ouellette

Gary Rafferty

Empty House

The pink kitchen cabinets stand
with their mouths open.

Bedrooms, once full of children,
inhabited by ghosts of furniture
outlined on the wallpaper.

Hallways, the temporary province of spiders.

In the living room
the sun probes hollow
through filmy windowpanes.

Chairmarks on the wide pine floorboards
like the dimples of a hammer
from a careless carpenter,

On the piano,
pushed up against the wall
a metronome pleads
for the touch of a finger

Sue Roberts

Poem for the Children I Will Never Give Birth To

I will never know you, feel your pull and tug,
the soft mantle of your heads against me.

You will never drop eggs, whose puzzles you ask me
to explain; there will be no messes to sponge from the floor.

I will not hear you shift at night, turning beneath sheets you picked
out, the ones I wouldn’t have chosen but you claimed you had to have.

I will not fold your clothes or arrange the books you’ve spilled
on the carpet, or move your bicycles from behind the car in the drive.

I will never sit in the second row of your grammar school auditorium
waiting to register your three-line speech with a flash.

Does this yearning, this inner gulf, want a child to fill it?
Would my dangerous darknesses recede if I put a child at the center?

I will have to understand the choices I’ve made,
which did not include you, although I’ve dreamed of you often.

I hope you will forgive my solitary life, the one I morticed
from pain and grief, the one I struggled to build and have grown to love.

It is not that I was unwilling to know you; it was simply easier,
in a world of so many hungry mouths, to feed only my own,

holding my heart like a small bird against the storm.
It was all I could do, and it is enough.

Dianne Ouellette

Sinner in the Hands

I performed an act of contrition every day.
Bored with God stories, I thought of them as Nancy Drew mysteries:
The Secret of the Lost Temple,
The Mysterious Burning Bush.
Sister Mary Francis sent me to Mother Superior;
ah, another student to mete out acts of Hail Marys.
Kneel here, she said;
I touched the green velvet hand rest.
I was not alone in that place;
He looked down from every corner,
I spoke to him,
gave him a litany of my joy.
At Easter, crawling with the other 7-year-old sinners,
I believed I was the queen
captured by the devil himself...
by my muteness I would save my people.
God was in me then;
I’ve never been holier.
I was compelled to believe,
yet silenced by disbelief.
Every time I spoke,
the good nun said to stand in the corner,
arms above my head.
My arms became strong.
I learned to tell stories.
The plots were thin at first,
but I learned the craft,
the art,
thanks be to God.