Sunday Houses the Sunday House (Iowa Poetry Prize)

2006 Iowa Poetry Prize winner

In Sunday Houses the Sunday House, Elizabeth Hughey embraces the possibility that we can learn as much from objects as we can from other people, from the inanimate as much as the animate. Each poem descends upon a place and a time, takes a few notes, and then leaves quietly without slamming any doors. Sunday Houses the Sunday House reveals what the world is like when your attention is focused elsewhere, when your head is turned the other way.

    In ineffably beautiful verse, Hughey captures moments in time and place with confidence but without being judgmental. Although it may seem that the scope of these poems is rather small—a good party, a couple of eggs, a housekeeper’s daydream—they reveal  both a deep intelligence and a spirit of whimsy. Gertrude Stein wrote that she wanted to be “drunk with nouns,” and in a sense that is what Hughey has accomplished here.

In Sunday Houses the Sunday House, Elizabeth Hughey embraces the possibility that we can learn as much from objects as we can from other people, from the inanimate as much as the animate. Each poem descends upon a place and a time, takes a few notes, and then leaves quietly without slamming any doors. Sunday Houses the Sunday House reveals what the world is like when your attention is focused elsewhere, when your head is turned the other way.

A native of Alabama, Elizabeth Hughey attended Hollins College and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where she received her MFA. Her poems have appeared in Shampoo, the Hat, and the Southern Poetry Review and are forthcoming in La Petite Zine. She lives and teaches in western Massachusetts.