The Light in Our Houses: Poems

Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize Series

by Al Maginnes

Remarkable for their dark, sharp wit, their stylistic unity, and their combination of sweetness and risk, the poems in The Light in Our Houses probe the intersection of public and private history, and visit the way stories are “what we have named history / was once only the braided rivers / of people’s lives, currents that brimmed / fast and dangerous, then emptied / into the wide blank spill of ocean.” Voicing a disdain for conclusions ― “the gaudy clothes we wrap narrative in” ― Al Maginnes writes poems that carry the weight of parables.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2000

Reviews

[Peggy Heitmann]

I liked many of the poems in this collection. Al has a distinctive style. My favorite poem in the collection is "After Weather", which seems autobiographical as most of his poems in this collection seem to be. "If we are not, and if I should precede you/into that storm no one walks out of,/love remember me like this: a man/watering flowers in the rain,..." I just love this imagery.

[Brandon Amico · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve never seen the show Friday Night Lights, and this book has little to nothing to do with small town sports/religion, but I can only imagine this is what they meant when they said “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” These poems are just that deeply felt and so unadorned in their desires and concerns that the impact is immense. Great poetry.

[Tristan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a solid but unremarkable collection of poems. Maginnes speaks clearly and fluidly in his poems; each piece is direct and smooth and he is unafraid of looking at the world. "The Room Below the River" is a lucid and sympathetic look at young people who commit suicide and "Invisible Stars" is a vaguely terrifying narrative of what should have been a kidnapping but wasn't and a look at the appeals to hunt for the missing ("The missing children live with us, a constellation / of class pictures ignored on milk cartons, on postcards / that ask, Have you seen me?"). Unfortunately, the poems do not grip the mind with their intelligence and beauty or the heart with their power, instead always falling just short of being phenomenal. In truth, I found many of the poems somewhat dull--the sort I would encounter in a large anthology, remark "oh, that was nice," and then promptly forget about: nothing to hate, but also nothing to particularly latch on to as great.
There are a few poems that I did like; "Lent", "Winter Ocean: Immersion" ("There is no rest in the rain, a metronome / striding over the lifts and valleys / of the clock's sleepless minutes."), "The Language of Birds", and "Shades" are all among the book's better poems. These poems get the closest to the incredibly lyricism that I want in poetry, as well as telling some of the most interesting stories. "Lent" in particular is very interesting:

Because his wife called him a selfish son-of-a-bitch
before she slammed the car door and left,
and because his married girlfriend has given him up
for Lent, he's dyeing eggs in his kitchen
the night before Easter and contemplating
the notion of sacrifice.

This poem captures the verbal simplicity of the poems (although I think it does a better job with it than many) and opens right up on a somewhat new story that Maginnnes is trying to tell, addressing sacrifice from a character who most of us would probably agree is fully in the wrong right now. This is what the poems of The Light in Our Houses try to do. Their success is perhaps more debatable.