Kristine Williams' first chapbook, Like an Empty House, examines the everyday, those things we often overlook. Through her poems, what others take for granted, becomes transcendent. Using language that is vivid, tactile, often visceral, her work offers us new ways to experience a familiar touch, wash the dishes, take a walk, and in doing so, shows us that common experiences can become a connection to a beautifully complex world.
The poems in Like an Empty House explore raising children to adulthood and, ultimately, letting go. Through the metaphor of getting a tattoo with her daughter, the reader can't help but recognize that the pain of getting a tattoo is just one of many hurts that mothers experience. She easily moves from fixing cars in the garage to fixing herself after retirement, from standing in the snow in flip flops while her dog explores in the dark to standing while her husband points out an Eastern Bluebird against the snow.
This is also a love story. Like an Empty House shares stories of the long-married with a keen eye, with honesty and openness, showing us that while there is still conflict and resentment, there is also still discovery, still heat and passion.
Williams' poems from her experience in a Montessori preschool find meaning in a naptime routine and explore the impact of the opioid crisis in small towns in southeast Ohio.
Williams brings us into the natural world that surrounds her in her home of Athens, Ohio and points readers to peepers in a pond or a truck shifting gears on an Appalachian highway. She invites us to stop and clearly see and listen to those things we might be tempted to rush past. Stars overhead become a place to wander. A trip to the road with a trashcan or walking the dog are a meditation. In examining the minutiae of the everyday, she expands the world so that we see our humanity, our connectedness, our vulnerability.
In the end, the stories in these poems fill what might once have been an empty house with truths that the reader should not turn away from. Like an Empty House invites us to enter and promises that we will not be disappointed.
