Winter at a Summer House by Mary Beth Hines (Dec. 2021-March 2022)

Please join us for our Winter 2022 blog tour for Winter at a Summer House by Mary Beth Hines, published by Kelsay Books in November 2021.

In Winter at a Summer House, Mary Beth Hines’s poems speak to the sublime and risks in every middle-class home, small city neighborhood, seaside retreat, or suburban backyard. Vivid, tactile imagery suffuses the collection, which follows the arc of a life from birth/first words to death/last words. Together, these poems create a sometimes heartbreaking, but often humorous and joyous, narrative that speaks to all readers.

Advance Praise:

“The poems in Mary Beth Hines’s first collection, Winter at a Summer House, strike a wonderful balance between narratives of everyday experience and a pristine, pure poetic imagination. Always rhythmically diverse, most of the time mellifluous, and often intense, Hines’s poetry vividly paints the life of a modern self-made woman, with her worries and obligations, her family, and her dreams. In response to the heroine’s world, this poetry, never static, vibrates with all sorts of emotions: love, friendship, youthful
infatuations, amorousness, jealousy, altruism. As a result, the book gives its reader all the pleasures of a novel – and of lyric novelty.”  – Katia Kapovich, the author of Gogol in Rome and Cossacks and Bandits

“Mary Beth Hines sings to us out of the staircases, back yards, and swimming pools of a life sumptuously lived, a world rife with joys and enticements, with girlhood wish and adulthood tryst. Each song lifts on the updrafts of a language passionately breathed, The poems are arrayed with such stunning craft that the art dissolves into the narrative. One forgets that one is reading and imagines that one is reliving this life. Winter at a Summer House is, in the words of one of the poems, a “gift to spark remembrance,” as if the memories had become our own.” -Tom Daley, the author of House You Cannot Reach

“Hines grew up in Massachusetts, adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean, and the poems in this debut collection are filled with richly detailed imagery evoking the sea—of characters swimming, bathing, diving, as if time were an unpredictable element and living, a process of navigating unexpected currents.  … A dynamic and colorful set of poems inspired by water and ocean imagery. ” – Kirkus Reviews

Photo Credit: David Mullen

About the Author:

Mary Beth Hines grew up in Massachusetts where she spent Saturday afternoons ditching ballet to pursue stories and poems deep in the stacks of the Waltham Public Library. She earned bachelor of arts in English from The College of the Holy Cross, and studied for a year at Durham University in England. She began a regular creative writing practice following a career in public service (Volpe Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts), leading award-winning national outreach, communications, and workforce programs. Her poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction appear in dozens of literary journals and anthologies both nationally and abroad. Winter at a Summer House is her first poetry collection. When not reading or writing, she swims, walks in the woods, plays with friends, travels with her husband, and enjoys life with their family, including their two beloved grandchildren. Visit her online.

Add to GoodReads:

Available at Kelsay Books and Amazon.

Blog Tour Schedule:

Dec. 7: Review Tales by Jeyran Main (Guest Post)

Dec. 14: The Book Lover’s Boudoir (Review)

Dec. 15: Wall-to-Wall Books (Review)

Jan. 4: Author Anthony Avina (Guest Post)

Jan. 13: Author Anthony Avina (Review)

Jan. 26: The Book Connection (Review)

March 25: True Book Addict (Review)

March 30: Necromancy Never Pays (Review)

Follow the blog tour with hashtags #winteratsummerhouse and @MaryBethHinesXO

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