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Kentucky Voices
Many-Storied House: Poems
Born in the small, eastern Kentucky coal-mining town of Harlan, George Ella Lyon began her career with Mountain , a chapbook of poems. She has since published many more books in multiple genres and for readers of all ages, but poetry remains at the heart of her work. Many-Storied House is her fifth collection.
While teaching aspiring writers, Lyon asked her students to write a poem based on memories rooted in a house where they had lived. Working on the assignment herself, Lyon began a personal journey, writing many poems for each room. In this intimate book, she strives to answer lingering questions about herself and her "Here I stand, at the beginning," she writes in the opening lines of the volume, "with more questions than / answers."
Collectively, the poems tell the sixty-eight-year-long story of the house, beginning with its construction by Lyon's grandfather and culminating with the poet's memories of bidding farewell to it after her mother's death. Moving, provocative, and heartfelt, Lyon's poetic excavations evoke more than just stock and stone; they explore the nature of memory and relationships, as well as the innermost architecture of love, family, and community. A poignant memoir in poems, Many-Storied House is a personal and revealing addition to George Ella Lyon's body of work.
While teaching aspiring writers, Lyon asked her students to write a poem based on memories rooted in a house where they had lived. Working on the assignment herself, Lyon began a personal journey, writing many poems for each room. In this intimate book, she strives to answer lingering questions about herself and her "Here I stand, at the beginning," she writes in the opening lines of the volume, "with more questions than / answers."
Collectively, the poems tell the sixty-eight-year-long story of the house, beginning with its construction by Lyon's grandfather and culminating with the poet's memories of bidding farewell to it after her mother's death. Moving, provocative, and heartfelt, Lyon's poetic excavations evoke more than just stock and stone; they explore the nature of memory and relationships, as well as the innermost architecture of love, family, and community. A poignant memoir in poems, Many-Storied House is a personal and revealing addition to George Ella Lyon's body of work.
134 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
19 people are currently reading
171 people want to read
About the author
George Ella Lyon
79 books74 followersGeorge Ella Lyon is a Kentucky author who has published in many genres, including picture books, poetry, juvenile novels, and articles.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
January 11, 2022
Very interesting. Thoughtful, heartfelt, and very poignant.
May 14, 2019
I feel bad giving this three stars because it pretty much made me weep at the end. The last section, all about the whole house and Lyon's mom dying, was AWESOME. A few individual poems were equally moving or odd, like "Kitchen Table" and the one about the linen closet. But overall, the plainspokenness of these poems--which I acknowledge is essential to the entire artistic project--left me unimpressed.
January 21, 2023
I adore George Ella Lyon, an Eastern Kentucky native, who writes to my heart and soul when it comes to family and the ordinary nuances of life. I really enjoyed the theme of this collection, moving through each room of her childhood home. Inspiring me, like she always does, to take this approach and try my own.
March 21, 2018
Makes me nostalgic for my own storied childhood home, both the good and bad memories.
September 8, 2018
Makes me want to write, use this for teaching. Inspiring. Raw. Just read it. In one or two sittings. You won’t be able to stop.
Read
March 18, 2024Such a beautifully written exploration of the rooms and objects that live and breathe around us and how they reflect our upbringing. I will say that it hit HARD reading it in my childhood home. After finishing it, I couldn’t help but see all of the ghosts of my past in my backyard. Every tree’s history.. Where the swing used to hang, the place the playhouse stood, easter egg hunts, pool parties, tearful pet memorials, everything. This collection of poems illustrates these themes through what I’d consider to be very literal writings. I’d recommend to all!
November 23, 2013
To give up the house where you grew up, to clear out its rooms and its memories, to give its rooms to strangers, this loss in my experience leaves you homeless like no other, even the death of your parents (though the two losses are of a piece). Even when you're over 60 years old and haven't lived in the house for decades.
I have lost the house where I grew up, where I was born, and I have stood by as a number of my friends have experienced that loss. We have reached that age.
Many-Storied House is a book-length elegy to the house where George Ella Lyon grew up. From the front door to the upstairs bedroom, these poems show us the house and the experiences that shaped the poet George Ella Lyon. Each room has its story.
The book has its nostalgia, its moments of sentiment, but it is not sentimental. Some of the memories are dark: Illness, pleas for protection unheeded. Childhood, even a happy childhood has it darknesses.
I need not say that the craftsmanship is superb, the compassion of these poems large.
The book ends with a reunion and a consolation. In "Welcome," the poet opens "the door behind my eyes" and is reunited with father and house in a place outside of time.
In the hands of another writer, such a scene might seem pure schlock, but George Ella lives life so vividly that I, for one, believe the door behind her eyes is really there.
I have lost the house where I grew up, where I was born, and I have stood by as a number of my friends have experienced that loss. We have reached that age.
Many-Storied House is a book-length elegy to the house where George Ella Lyon grew up. From the front door to the upstairs bedroom, these poems show us the house and the experiences that shaped the poet George Ella Lyon. Each room has its story.
The book has its nostalgia, its moments of sentiment, but it is not sentimental. Some of the memories are dark: Illness, pleas for protection unheeded. Childhood, even a happy childhood has it darknesses.
I need not say that the craftsmanship is superb, the compassion of these poems large.
The book ends with a reunion and a consolation. In "Welcome," the poet opens "the door behind my eyes" and is reunited with father and house in a place outside of time.
In the hands of another writer, such a scene might seem pure schlock, but George Ella lives life so vividly that I, for one, believe the door behind her eyes is really there.
October 3, 2024
I discovered this collection of poetry earlier this year when Carrie and I were doing a poem a week challenge. George Ella Lyon is a Kentucky poet and author who has written numerous books for both children and adults. This collection of poetry has a unique structure. Lyon has taught many writing classes and once she assigned students to write poems based on memories they had about a house they had lived. She did the assignment as well and this is the result. She took the home where she grew up in Harlan, KY a coal-mining town, and where her parents lived until they passed away. She takes the reader on a tour of this home, writing several poems about each room or space. The poems time wise span over 60 years from the time her grandfather built it until the time When Lyon’s mother dies and she is preparing the house to be sold. IN giving us the story of this house, she is also giving us the story of this Appalachian family and community. It’s like a memoir in poems. This is a poetry collection I really enjoyed.
February 2, 2014
I want to do justice to this volume, slim through powerful, so I will likely add more to this review at a later date.
Whenever you are reading poetry and you have to stop to laugh or to cry, you know you are reading words of power. In many ways this book came along at a meaningful time in my own life, and this is probably why it resonates so strongly with me. Lyon tells the stories of her family within the framework of the home she grew up in and then talks about being the generation that has to dismantle that household when her mother dies. Living through this myself this year, her words ring strong, true, and heart baring. I stopped several times to cry, to really sob as I felt her emotions on the page.
I've always liked her work. However, this is exceptional. And a gift.
Whenever you are reading poetry and you have to stop to laugh or to cry, you know you are reading words of power. In many ways this book came along at a meaningful time in my own life, and this is probably why it resonates so strongly with me. Lyon tells the stories of her family within the framework of the home she grew up in and then talks about being the generation that has to dismantle that household when her mother dies. Living through this myself this year, her words ring strong, true, and heart baring. I stopped several times to cry, to really sob as I felt her emotions on the page.
I've always liked her work. However, this is exceptional. And a gift.
May 24, 2014
Loved this book for several reasons... that there's so much humor and wrenching anguish at the same time, that it's so brilliant in its conception, most of all, that someone could contain so much family history and such a tremendous loss in one book. GeorgeElla Lyon had to pay an awfully high price for this book. We're just lucky she was brave enough and strong enough to do so....
June 20, 2015
Poetry good for the soul of a Kentucky girl.
June 20, 2023
The arrangement of George Ella Lyon’s collection of home-centered poetry–floor by floor and room by room–reminds me of spring cleaning as a kid, going from one project (washing windows and clearing out all the dead bugs on the windowsill) to the next (vacuuming and terrifying the dog), on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Her writing is perfectly evocative of those little forgotten childhood moments that seemed mundane at the time but ended up having long-lasting impacts. The poems skip back and forth in time to emphasize the way sentimental values slowly seep into commonplace objects that we come to realize we’ve taken for granted for the better part of our lives.
There is a good mix of the lighthearted and the more troublesome. For every object that dredged up memories of family camaraderie, there was another that was taken over by immense grief. And, of course, many objects spoke to both the good and the bad that a simple household can be witness to. The wingback chair is comfortable but will forever be marred by the time grandma almost died in it. The kitchen table has housed many arts and crafts projects but has also been the hearth of terrible news.
The most devastating poem of the bunch is the one that contemplates the death of Lyon’s mother. It simply states, “Mother? Dead? Who will / tell us what things mean if the / dictionary dies?” For those of us lucky enough to have been reliant on strong parents over the years, we recognize that, though we have done much on our own, those parents are still the fount of all wisdom and level-headedness. Even broaching the thought is difficult and, perhaps, why Lyons left the poem untitled.
There are a few poems that either hint at or directly confront sexual abuse and suicide, and this is where the collection loses me a bit. It’s certainly not that these issues are any less valuable as points of reflection, but they are less universal. I think Lyon should have either expanded upon them or cut them out. There’s something about the way she wrings pathos from the quotidian that gets lost here.
There is a good mix of the lighthearted and the more troublesome. For every object that dredged up memories of family camaraderie, there was another that was taken over by immense grief. And, of course, many objects spoke to both the good and the bad that a simple household can be witness to. The wingback chair is comfortable but will forever be marred by the time grandma almost died in it. The kitchen table has housed many arts and crafts projects but has also been the hearth of terrible news.
The most devastating poem of the bunch is the one that contemplates the death of Lyon’s mother. It simply states, “Mother? Dead? Who will / tell us what things mean if the / dictionary dies?” For those of us lucky enough to have been reliant on strong parents over the years, we recognize that, though we have done much on our own, those parents are still the fount of all wisdom and level-headedness. Even broaching the thought is difficult and, perhaps, why Lyons left the poem untitled.
There are a few poems that either hint at or directly confront sexual abuse and suicide, and this is where the collection loses me a bit. It’s certainly not that these issues are any less valuable as points of reflection, but they are less universal. I think Lyon should have either expanded upon them or cut them out. There’s something about the way she wrings pathos from the quotidian that gets lost here.
June 6, 2025
This was my first time reading from this poet, and I'm hooked! Definitely my kind of style to read, and I love the theme of thinking through the rooms and spaces of her childhood home. I was especially reflective since my dad passed away last year, and my mom is getting older, so this was one of my favorites:
Labor
I am doggedly working
at what I do not want to see happen:
removing everything she chose
scouring every handprint.
It's my job
to render these rooms,
the signature of her life,
anonymous,
get down to the bare space
Papaw built
for her and Daddy to move into.
What was it like that day?
Another question
I never thought to ask.
No matter now,
However it began, her life
in this house is complete.
So mine must be too
except for this
sorting
pitching
carrying away.
Labor
I am doggedly working
at what I do not want to see happen:
removing everything she chose
scouring every handprint.
It's my job
to render these rooms,
the signature of her life,
anonymous,
get down to the bare space
Papaw built
for her and Daddy to move into.
What was it like that day?
Another question
I never thought to ask.
No matter now,
However it began, her life
in this house is complete.
So mine must be too
except for this
sorting
pitching
carrying away.
May 11, 2017
George Ella Lyon is a true Kentucky treasure, as is beautifully illustrated by this book. With just a few, well-chosen words, George Ella brings us into her life, and offers us a window into her soul. This book is organized by the rooms of the house that George Ella grew up in, and as we travel through the rooms, we see her life unfold, bit by bit. Even if you don't normally read poetry, give this book a try.
December 29, 2018
Beautiful look at family
Maybe its the theme of losing parents, but this book of poetry was a punch in the gut. I read it to find mentor texts to teach students, but I found more than that.
Maybe its the theme of losing parents, but this book of poetry was a punch in the gut. I read it to find mentor texts to teach students, but I found more than that.
July 17, 2019
4.5 stars. A beautiful collection of poems about moments in different rooms of the poet’s childhood home. Many poems sparked recollections of my own home. I’ve flagged so many pages as potential mentor texts for students that I need to just go buy it and return my library copy.
September 1, 2019
I enjoyed the poetry in this book. I had hoped that it night serve as a mentor text for my 7th graders writing autobiographical poetry, but the writing is more complex to be a model for such inexperienced writers I think.
October 9, 2019
A collection of poems build around a common writing prompt: Imagine a house, and using your imagination, go through each room and explore the memories that are conjured. Lyon grew up in Harlan County in a middle class family. Her poems are at times harrowing, sentimental, nostalgic and funny.
December 10, 2024
4.5
This is a poignant collection of poems that go from room to room, sharing memories from the long history of the family that grew in this house. Some poems are funny. Some are sad. All are beautiful.
This is a poignant collection of poems that go from room to room, sharing memories from the long history of the family that grew in this house. Some poems are funny. Some are sad. All are beautiful.
December 10, 2017
George Ella Lyon is aware of place in a way that many writers struggle with. She literally draws us a map of her home, and thereby, her soul. A wonderful collection of poetry.
March 23, 2019
Beautiful words. Autobiographical. This is the first book of poetry that I’ve read cover to cover. Great mentor text options for teachers of reading & writing.
July 9, 2019
I loved this collection. It reminded me in so many ways of my own childhood, calling to mind things and people and experiences I had forgotten.
December 8, 2019
So beautiful and moving...
April 18, 2020
A stunning, heartfelt collection of poems walking through her home.
January 2, 2021
a good book about Place
March 8, 2022
She crafts words the way a good woodworker turns spindles on a lathe. I chuckled, I cried. Read it.
March 27, 2022
Beautiful, heartbreaking
January 5, 2023
Amazing poetry collection...being an Appalachian resident myself, I resonated with her poetry so much. Highly recommend.
February 10, 2015
In Many-Storied House, George Ella Lyon recalls with great emotion yet simple words her formative and adult years through the lens of her homeplace in Harlan, Kentucky. The house was built by her grandfather and it was here that she packed up her memories after her mother's death.
We've all heard and probably used the phrase "if these walls could talk" before in terms of a property of either historic or personal significance.
Well, Lyon makes the walls of 108 First Street talk. Room by room (a floorplan for each of the two levels is provided), stories are told making the house into a home. In the end, we all feel "at home" in this place.
This is a portion of a review that I wrote for my website, kaintuckeean.com
We've all heard and probably used the phrase "if these walls could talk" before in terms of a property of either historic or personal significance.
Well, Lyon makes the walls of 108 First Street talk. Room by room (a floorplan for each of the two levels is provided), stories are told making the house into a home. In the end, we all feel "at home" in this place.
This is a portion of a review that I wrote for my website, kaintuckeean.com
November 30, 2013
Very accessible poetry. I was thoroughly moved by the sweetness and pain of memory.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews