Who Are You from Home? (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781639804870)

In a time when immigration stirs up so much angry debate, it's refreshing to read Mary Haines's level-headed poems about her Polish ancestors putting down roots in America. Who Are You from Home? traces a family history that bears out Maya Angelou's comment: "If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going." Haines says something similar in "Departure, April 1891"-"The heart without a compass, stalls." This book is a family chronicle full of engaging stories that shows us how the past can be a compass to guide the heart through the present into the future.

-Henry Hart, English Dept., College of William and Mary; Virginia Poet Laureate, Emeritus; author of Familiar Ghosts

To read these poems of displacement and defiance in "Who Are You from Home?" is to be immersed in language so rich, so unexpected and emotionally gripping that we're conveyed to a world foreign but intimately welcoming, as Mary "Maryśka" Haines explores the Polish roots of her past. She weaves words from a country not her own but one that lives in her blood with the sorrows and triumphs of her ancestors who immigrated to America. But the other richness belongs entirely to Haines in her prowess as a poet, every word fresh, heart keen, "a peddler pocketing stories." Despite the unresolved complexities of the past, she writes this affirmation in "A Tall Man," dedicated to her father: "just be there, Maryśka, to hold your hand; / and all the world / fell in place."

-Suzanne Underwood Rhodes, Arkansas Poet Laureate and author of Flying Yellow

Mary Mallek Haines's collection Who Are You from Home is a tender, forceful expression of the tension between relinquishing roots and cultivating new ones. In one poem, a young couple bear a sapling from their native Poland: "It will drive good roots in America," Haines writes, "its fragrance ... / will spirit their homeland back to them." The poet assumes the vicissitudes of her ancestors, at times identifying their small yet consequential transitions with intimate experiences of her own, as in: "...a gray cat crouches on a ledge above a barn window. / A swallow, its fierce wings beating, / flies into its path, my heart inside the bird." Thus beats every heart, acutely alive between tenses, as ours might, too, through Haines's memorable poems. Come, read!

-Sofia M. Starnes, Virginia Poet Laureate, Emerita; author of The Consequence of Moonlight


Author: Mary Mallek Haines
ISBN-10: 1639804870
ISBN-13: 9781639804870
Publisher: Kelsay Books
Language: English
Published: 12/15/2023
Pages: 48
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.18lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.12d