The House of Yearning (Paperback or Softback)

As you step into Nina Bennett’s house of yearning, you’ll find it much like your own. You’ll sit together on the sofa, looking through photo albums, gently running a finger over the gaps in family portraits. Even though you arrive alone, both your families will soon fill the room.

Alarie Tennille, author of Waking on the Moon and Running Counterclockwise

In The House of Yearning, Nina Bennett calls on the Muse of Memory to help comprehend the deaths of her sister, granddaughter, and father. In a compact narrative arc, the chapbook offers poignant remembrances of sudden loss and tender reconstruction using an expert mix of concrete images and abstract lamentations. Yes, these poems will offer succor to those who have recently experienced bereavement, but they will also appeal to any reader who appreciates the brief, capricious nature of life. After reading these 26 poems, you will not only seize the moment, you will hug someone you love.

Ken Craft, author of Lost Sherpa of Happiness

A chronicle of sorrows, this moving chapbook focuses on family losses, a sister, a stillborn grandchild and a beloved father. In After Care, the sister is remembered “your voice still haunts my nights. Symphony in E Minor, Fourth Movement tells of a tragedy “my son brings his baby home in a porcelain urn.” Visiting the destruction in Waldo Canyon Wildfire erects the memory of the father “his death as improbable as cinder-covered columbines.” The final poem Gloaming aptly notes there is “no named color for grief.” Without sentimentality, but with a precision of feeling, Nina Bennett captures the emotions we will all ultimately experience.

Joan Colby, author of The Seven Heavenly Virtues