Buried in the Suburbs: poems

by Jamie Lynn Heller

"Heller writes about the power of love and memory with nostalgia, wry humor and sometimes a dash of horror. In Heller's suburbs-- the staidest of environments-- the wild is never far away... Buried in the Suburbs is a tribute to... a place where the trappings of modern life don't always succeed in keeping the prairie roots from breaking through the asphalt and tidy green lawns."-- Pat Daneman, author of After All and Where the World Begins

Genres: Poetry

86 pages, Paperback

First published May 8, 2018

Reviews

[Tyler Sheldon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buried in the Suburbs easily turns over rocks that many might argue are too cumbersome to hoist. Right smack out of the gate Jamie is unwilling to blithely coexist with "our little / automatic robots / that allow us to / remain oblivious." This is a useful stubbornness, as we shamble about in a world where the things we've made have outsourced our good fortune: luck is of no consequence when we can open an app to pinpoint the arrival of rain or, quite literally, the road less traveled by. Timely and measured, Buried in the Suburbs reaffirms that like Jamie, we can go out to find our own luck—or even create a little ourselves.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of lovely, poignant moments captured beautifully. Scenes of nature, both suburban and wild, parenthood, elderly parents, exhaustion from overbusyness, pieces of life, each a small bit of resonant truth.

Two short samples:

Kansas August Evening

Open my window, Mommy
she said
I want to hear the
cicada lullaby


When the leaves thin

I can see my neighbor
on down the way.

He looks up

and we hesitate, caught
between waving
or pretending the curtain

is still between us.

[Michelle Hannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the images of nature that so many of these poems painted for me. It’s surreal to me how Jamie assembles words about nostalgic days gone by or the mundane challenges of life into something so beautiful and musical. How a poem about “Canoeing” or “Walking on Sand Dunes in the Rain” can be so exquisitely crafted as to tell a full story or create an entire tactile experience for me – sight, smell, sound, feel.

[Kathy KS · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only a handful of these poems actually spoke to me; mostly from Part 2.