Lessons Learned

In Lessons Learned, Hazel Kitts writes with the authority of someone who understands the nuances, bafflements, and beauties of life. Her voice is grounded, plainspoken, and deeply observant — equally at home in a flooded farmhouse, a paint-cornered room, a nursing home, or a night club pulsing with doumbek beats. Kitts moves between the intimate and the cosmic, finding in the small things of ordinary life — a dandelion hiding beneath a rose, a tree roach meeting its end, a yellow bird slipped into a child’s pocket — the full weight of human experience. That is, the big ‘things’ come out of the small ‘things’ and expel a visionary truth. This is where she finds the magic of understanding. These poems explore justice, memory, and what we owe one another. They tussle and tackle class and poverty with the whispering humiliations of being left without a seat at the table, and with the maddening intricacies of family. Kitts’ voice embraces tenderness and moral outrage, and it is this tension that disrupts any kind of equilibrium that might exist and smashes it into surprise. Surprise is the essence of what makes these poems resonate. Lessons Learned is rooted in an emotionally textured, wise, and quietly illuminating voice that we can always learn from.

—Matthew Lippman, author, We Are All Sleeping with Our Sneakers On

Hazel Kitts’ ‘debut album,’ Lessons Learned, is a selection of poems so earthy and poignant that today’s songwriters will undoubtedly want to read and imitate. Her style is straightforward, physical, eclectic, spiritual. The book covers a wide arc of personal experiences gathered into an unforgettable Dylanesque quilt. With a country voice that never wavers, Kitts tells things head-on (whether it’s a car accident, a talking graveyard, or her own roughshod childhood, literally moving constantly in poverty and violation). Her poems are strong, uniquely cadenced, with spare language and unforgettable focal points: the early spring’s tiny yellow flowers and late summer’s purple aster each hold an intimate, busy world.

—Carolyn Clark, author, Watershed: New Finger Lakes Poems