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Permanent Change of Station
With humor and grace, Lisa Stice (author of the previously published "Uniform," Aldrich Press, 2016) lovingly interrogates and illuminates life in a military family.
"Her close observations of childhood magic and household routines, quietly set against ever-present question-marks of wartime deployment and displacement, are essential and timely insights into the modern military family experience," says the publisher.
"If you've ever been a military kid, parent, or spouse--regardless of age or branch or era--you'll find a welcome home in her words."
Together with her toddler daughter and little dog Seamus, Stice explores the in-betweens of separation and connection, and the quest for finding one's place in the world--whether child or adult.
Stice's signature style is open and accessible--this is poetry for people who think they don't read poetry.
Frequently, for example, she borrows phrases from texts she finds readily at hand around the house, including quotations from Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," and Dr. Seuss's "The Sneetches."
In another point of entry, the family's beloved Norwich Terrier often appears as a sentry, companion, and guide.
In one poem, "The Dog Speaks," Stice writes:
He says, I can't leave.
This place is mine--
I claimed all the trees.
I say, There will be more.
After all the temporary homes
and all the stops in between,
this whole country
will by yours.
"Her close observations of childhood magic and household routines, quietly set against ever-present question-marks of wartime deployment and displacement, are essential and timely insights into the modern military family experience," says the publisher.
"If you've ever been a military kid, parent, or spouse--regardless of age or branch or era--you'll find a welcome home in her words."
Together with her toddler daughter and little dog Seamus, Stice explores the in-betweens of separation and connection, and the quest for finding one's place in the world--whether child or adult.
Stice's signature style is open and accessible--this is poetry for people who think they don't read poetry.
Frequently, for example, she borrows phrases from texts she finds readily at hand around the house, including quotations from Sun Tzu's "The Art of War," and Dr. Seuss's "The Sneetches."
In another point of entry, the family's beloved Norwich Terrier often appears as a sentry, companion, and guide.
In one poem, "The Dog Speaks," Stice writes:
He says, I can't leave.
This place is mine--
I claimed all the trees.
I say, There will be more.
After all the temporary homes
and all the stops in between,
this whole country
will by yours.
96 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 2018
1 person is currently reading
15 people want to read
About the author
Lisa Stice
11 books22 followersLisa Stice is a poet, literary activist, mother, military spouse, and the author of four full-length poetry collections, Letters from Conflict (Middle West Press, 2024), Forces (Middle West Press, 2021), Permanent Change of Station (Middle West Press, 2018) and Uniform (Aldrich Press, 2016), and a chapbook, Desert (Prolific Press, 2018). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee who volunteers as a mentor with the Veterans Writing Project, as Poetry Editor for The Military Spouse Book Review, as Poetry Editor for Inklette Magazine, and as a writer for the Military Spouse Fine Artists Network (Milspo-FAN). She received a BA in English literature from Mesa State College (now Colorado Mesa University) and an MFA in creative writing and literary arts from the University of Alaska Anchorage. While it is difficult to say where home is, she currently lives in North Carolina with her husband, daughter and dog.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 22, 2018
I wrote a review of this book on my blog so thought I'd post it here also :)
It starts with the cover.
A sweet little girl, lost in thought alongside her faithful ‘Wizard of Oz’ terrier, evokes ‘there’s no place like home”. This beautiful scene is above a harsh photo of a humvee in an angry and dangerous desert a world away. This juxtaposition between what we want and what we have is the crux of the human condition.
We want serenity but instead battle disruption.
Permanent Change of Station, the newest book of poetry by Lisa Stice, provides the voice of what we want versus what we have.
My favorite is this one sentence poem:
Fix, Mommy
Some things never go
back to the way they were.
I read this as - Fix Mommy. As a mom, I often feel broken. This poem made me remember when my daughter used to ask me to fix something, and I easily could. She’s a difficult teen now, and it breaks me when I can’t fix her problems anymore. I wish we could go back to the way things were, when all it took was a kiss and maybe an ice cream cone to make her troubles melt away. It’s not like that anymore.
In View from My Kitchen Window, Stice admires, (maybe a little jealously) a showy red cardinal outside her kitchen. She wishes she could move her family as easily as a bird…lifting her family from one place to another, and be ‘lightweight’ with no ‘baggage or belongings’.
I also liked the poem, Fifth Choice. Do we get what we deserve? Would I want what I deserve? Sometimes I deserve a pie in the face. Sometimes I deserve scorn. Sometimes I deserve love. What do we really deserve?
In, The Dog Dreams, the poet comforts a sleeping dog. I’ve watched my dog sleeping, then twitch, and make weak running motions. I wonder what is going on in my dog’s head. Same as mine? Stice then reassures us, and her dog, to come home and stay, because the sun is shining here.
There is a sometimes funny disconnect between men and women, and the poem, Another Disappointment exploits it. Did the woman want the foxglove flower, but he brought home the brand of motor cross gloves instead? Or perhaps she wanted luxurious leather gloves trimmed with fox fur, but he gave her a planter of foxgloves?
Who knows.
That’s the wonderful thing about this collection of poetry. The reader can take the poems to explore the feelings they have in their own lives. And hopefully, that will lead us all to a little more serenity.
Permanent Change of Station is available via Amazon and other booksellers worldwide as well as her first poetry collection, Uniform.
Published by Middle West Press, LLC, an up and coming micro press based in Iowa, with these titles worth checking out:
Hugging this Rock by Eric Chandler
FOB Haiku by Randy Brown
Reporting For Duty by Randy Brown
It starts with the cover.
A sweet little girl, lost in thought alongside her faithful ‘Wizard of Oz’ terrier, evokes ‘there’s no place like home”. This beautiful scene is above a harsh photo of a humvee in an angry and dangerous desert a world away. This juxtaposition between what we want and what we have is the crux of the human condition.
We want serenity but instead battle disruption.
Permanent Change of Station, the newest book of poetry by Lisa Stice, provides the voice of what we want versus what we have.
My favorite is this one sentence poem:
Fix, Mommy
Some things never go
back to the way they were.
I read this as - Fix Mommy. As a mom, I often feel broken. This poem made me remember when my daughter used to ask me to fix something, and I easily could. She’s a difficult teen now, and it breaks me when I can’t fix her problems anymore. I wish we could go back to the way things were, when all it took was a kiss and maybe an ice cream cone to make her troubles melt away. It’s not like that anymore.
In View from My Kitchen Window, Stice admires, (maybe a little jealously) a showy red cardinal outside her kitchen. She wishes she could move her family as easily as a bird…lifting her family from one place to another, and be ‘lightweight’ with no ‘baggage or belongings’.
I also liked the poem, Fifth Choice. Do we get what we deserve? Would I want what I deserve? Sometimes I deserve a pie in the face. Sometimes I deserve scorn. Sometimes I deserve love. What do we really deserve?
In, The Dog Dreams, the poet comforts a sleeping dog. I’ve watched my dog sleeping, then twitch, and make weak running motions. I wonder what is going on in my dog’s head. Same as mine? Stice then reassures us, and her dog, to come home and stay, because the sun is shining here.
There is a sometimes funny disconnect between men and women, and the poem, Another Disappointment exploits it. Did the woman want the foxglove flower, but he brought home the brand of motor cross gloves instead? Or perhaps she wanted luxurious leather gloves trimmed with fox fur, but he gave her a planter of foxgloves?
Who knows.
That’s the wonderful thing about this collection of poetry. The reader can take the poems to explore the feelings they have in their own lives. And hopefully, that will lead us all to a little more serenity.
Permanent Change of Station is available via Amazon and other booksellers worldwide as well as her first poetry collection, Uniform.
Published by Middle West Press, LLC, an up and coming micro press based in Iowa, with these titles worth checking out:
Hugging this Rock by Eric Chandler
FOB Haiku by Randy Brown
Reporting For Duty by Randy Brown
July 21, 2018
Permanent Change of Station by Lisa Stice. Johnston, IA: Middle West Press LLC, 2018. 96 pages. $11.99, paperback.
The collection has three sections, Half-Known Roads, The In-Betweens, and Bedtime Stories. Stice begins with “PCS,” “Why do they say permanent? / It doesn’t hold steady, / but then neither do mountains / nor bridges nor brick houses / nor anything else. // They say, Go. Adapt. / Now we understand— / we’re permanently changed. / That can be counted on, / and we change often” (3).
The military family comes to life with Stice’s words, the separation, the fear. In “Father’s Day,” “It’s just / the three of us // mother / daughter / dog // again” (27). What does home really mean? In “Our Nine Situations,” “no, Daddy won’t be there / yes, we thought he would be….we call this our home / even though it isn’t (16-17). And in “Fix, Mommy,” “Some things just never / go back to the way they were” (39).
The poems “When Your Substance Is Drained Away,” “Reduction, “Afternoon One Day When You Were Young” were published in The Magnolia Review Volume 3, Issue 1, and it is pleasing to see this poems again with more of Stice’s images and precise word choices. Each poem is complete, an entity to itself, yet the building blocks of each poem builds a house for us to dwell, even as it changes around us.
I love reading Stice’s words. They are fully present and conscious, reflective and genuine of the human experiences. It is a joy to share her poems and read them aloud to others.
—Suzanna Anderson
(originally published in The Magnolia Review, Volume 4, Issue 2)
The collection has three sections, Half-Known Roads, The In-Betweens, and Bedtime Stories. Stice begins with “PCS,” “Why do they say permanent? / It doesn’t hold steady, / but then neither do mountains / nor bridges nor brick houses / nor anything else. // They say, Go. Adapt. / Now we understand— / we’re permanently changed. / That can be counted on, / and we change often” (3).
The military family comes to life with Stice’s words, the separation, the fear. In “Father’s Day,” “It’s just / the three of us // mother / daughter / dog // again” (27). What does home really mean? In “Our Nine Situations,” “no, Daddy won’t be there / yes, we thought he would be….we call this our home / even though it isn’t (16-17). And in “Fix, Mommy,” “Some things just never / go back to the way they were” (39).
The poems “When Your Substance Is Drained Away,” “Reduction, “Afternoon One Day When You Were Young” were published in The Magnolia Review Volume 3, Issue 1, and it is pleasing to see this poems again with more of Stice’s images and precise word choices. Each poem is complete, an entity to itself, yet the building blocks of each poem builds a house for us to dwell, even as it changes around us.
I love reading Stice’s words. They are fully present and conscious, reflective and genuine of the human experiences. It is a joy to share her poems and read them aloud to others.
—Suzanna Anderson
(originally published in The Magnolia Review, Volume 4, Issue 2)
May 4, 2018
Should be read more than once. Stice's poems address the identities that remain true through each changing duty station and the many struggles that aren't covered in the media, even though the family's battle is in many ways more essential than a new weapon. This is true war poetry -- finding the story of the one that refuses to fit the prescribed narrative.
December 29, 2018
Creative Energy from the Homefront: A Review of Permanent Change of Station
Lisa Stice’s newest release Permanent Change of Station (Middle West Press LLC, 2018) casts light upon the speaker’s challenges of keeping home(s) while nurturing a young daughter along with a Norwich Terrier companion through various deployments. These charges are set to the institutionalized pace of a military lifestyle.
First, I am struck by the contrasting cover images. Against a turquoise bluebird sky is Mary Stevenson Cassatt’s oil-on-canvas, Little Girl in Blue Armchair. Here is the little girl planning out her next step, tiny dog in tow, catching twenty winks, juxtaposed with a photograph below of a sharp-edged Humvee traversing blank-slated, endless desert (photo credit: Sgt. Conner Robbins). The pairing of the two speaks of frozen motion.
But the true energy is that of Stice’s writing. Organized into three sections (Half-Known Roads, The In-Betweens and Bedtime Stories), she writes not of particular places, but of growth, namely that between a mother and child as they reconcile the comings and goings of a husband and father, and maneuver the uncomfortable terrain of establishing yet another new home in yet another new town.
boxes of melted crayons
melted a little more
inside a moving truck
birthday streamers
still rolled up somewhere
in a box under a box behind a box
locking a door
another last time
with no goodbyes
It’s one thing to have the proverbial junk drawer forever fixed in the kitchen, the drawer that collects the gathered, broken crayons, the end rounds of birthday streamers, the loose rubble. It is another to routinely pack it all up, establish yet another catch-all drawer in a far-flung place to be determined by the military establishment.
It is a life not without objection.
While inviting the reader into this world, Stice ultimately challenges the reader’s own views, especially with her meager-line poems. In “Fifth Choice,” she writes,
I’d be
lying
if I
told you
we get
what we
deserve.
I can’t tell you how many times I turned back to this page, this neck punch of a poem, to consider again its ramifications, its purpose, its placement. The poem immediately following, “When In Difficult Country,” offers resignation:
we do not know
the mountains
and valleys ahead
we never will
they are earth and stones
just the same
I enjoy much the spontaneity of several poems: “Afternoon One Day When You Were Young,” “Daughter,” and “On Such Little Things Happiness Depends,” among others. Contained within are the unplanned moments that catch even the speaker by surprise. That Sun Tzu and Dr. Seuss are referenced in epigraphs illustrates the dimensionality of Stice’s work.
As with the dueling cover images, Stice writes with the vernacular of a mother and pairs it with the jargon of the military. This, too, is the beauty of her earlier work, Uniform (Aldrich Press, 2016). This use of hinged language provides fresh and prodigious reading. Like the Humvee in the cover’s photograph, Stice’s poetry is a also vessel; not one symbolic of war-time, but instead, a creative force.
Stice, Lisa. Permanent Change of Station. Middle West Press, LLC, 2018.
Lisa Stice’s newest release Permanent Change of Station (Middle West Press LLC, 2018) casts light upon the speaker’s challenges of keeping home(s) while nurturing a young daughter along with a Norwich Terrier companion through various deployments. These charges are set to the institutionalized pace of a military lifestyle.
First, I am struck by the contrasting cover images. Against a turquoise bluebird sky is Mary Stevenson Cassatt’s oil-on-canvas, Little Girl in Blue Armchair. Here is the little girl planning out her next step, tiny dog in tow, catching twenty winks, juxtaposed with a photograph below of a sharp-edged Humvee traversing blank-slated, endless desert (photo credit: Sgt. Conner Robbins). The pairing of the two speaks of frozen motion.
But the true energy is that of Stice’s writing. Organized into three sections (Half-Known Roads, The In-Betweens and Bedtime Stories), she writes not of particular places, but of growth, namely that between a mother and child as they reconcile the comings and goings of a husband and father, and maneuver the uncomfortable terrain of establishing yet another new home in yet another new town.
boxes of melted crayons
melted a little more
inside a moving truck
birthday streamers
still rolled up somewhere
in a box under a box behind a box
locking a door
another last time
with no goodbyes
It’s one thing to have the proverbial junk drawer forever fixed in the kitchen, the drawer that collects the gathered, broken crayons, the end rounds of birthday streamers, the loose rubble. It is another to routinely pack it all up, establish yet another catch-all drawer in a far-flung place to be determined by the military establishment.
It is a life not without objection.
While inviting the reader into this world, Stice ultimately challenges the reader’s own views, especially with her meager-line poems. In “Fifth Choice,” she writes,
I’d be
lying
if I
told you
we get
what we
deserve.
I can’t tell you how many times I turned back to this page, this neck punch of a poem, to consider again its ramifications, its purpose, its placement. The poem immediately following, “When In Difficult Country,” offers resignation:
we do not know
the mountains
and valleys ahead
we never will
they are earth and stones
just the same
I enjoy much the spontaneity of several poems: “Afternoon One Day When You Were Young,” “Daughter,” and “On Such Little Things Happiness Depends,” among others. Contained within are the unplanned moments that catch even the speaker by surprise. That Sun Tzu and Dr. Seuss are referenced in epigraphs illustrates the dimensionality of Stice’s work.
As with the dueling cover images, Stice writes with the vernacular of a mother and pairs it with the jargon of the military. This, too, is the beauty of her earlier work, Uniform (Aldrich Press, 2016). This use of hinged language provides fresh and prodigious reading. Like the Humvee in the cover’s photograph, Stice’s poetry is a also vessel; not one symbolic of war-time, but instead, a creative force.
Stice, Lisa. Permanent Change of Station. Middle West Press, LLC, 2018.
January 17, 2019
Read about the joyful love of a mother for her daughter and dog. There’s a price. You’ll also experience what it’s like to be related to Uncle Sam by marriage: gut-wrenching worry, isolation, and disruption. Stice channels Sun Tzu’s Art of War into the title of one of her poems and reminds us: We Can Only Be Saved by Destruction.
December 4, 2018
These poems are moving, tender, with dashes of thoughtful humor. You will feel connected to the author and her daughter as you read. A marvelous collection for anyone who's endured separations from loved ones, who feels out of place in a new locale, or who's struggling to find a true home. Lisa Stice is observant and incredibly talented, and I'll read anything she writes.
July 19, 2023
A book that you linger in your mind for eons after you have read it.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews