Empty Room With Light: Poems

by Ann Hostetler

In her first full-length collection, Empty Room with Light, Ann Hostetler draws on her training as a visual artist as she seeks to articulate moments of illumination in everyday life. The collection is structured by a series of frames playfully named after different forms of visual display, such as "Family Album," "Exhibitions," and "En Plein Air." A rich and varied palette of images-from the severe beauty of her Amish Aunt's flower garden to the psychedelic swirls on her own painted toes-both lends Hostetler's work a distinctive voice and offers readers many points of connection. Each section of the book illuminates a different facet of the poet's journey through life.

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 2002

Reviews

[Eliana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Someday I would like to write poetry about something beautiful, something grateful like describing “…speech more honest / than poetry—how you focus the world / we walk in…” or “…her gentle / speech reordered the world, stars grew close…” (60, 65). Until then, I write “locked in a rage against the truth / of solitaire: some hands you’re dealt / will not play out” (97).

This collection was an accidental find at the used bookstore that gave me a whole $12 for a Trader Joe’s bagful of my books that needed a new home. (Lesson learned: Next time I will take them to the Little Library down the road.) It was tucked between masses of self-published Instagram poetry, and something about Hostetler’s author bio and her closeness to Pennsylvania gave me the feeling this 2002 volume was not, in fact, in that same category. And I’m very glad that was right, give or take the faint whiffs of mildew from the pages that made my throat itch and will likely convince me to get the book out of my space. I found myself reading these poems academically. As in, what can I learn from the way she weaves a story in lines?