"Try picking drops of the ocean with tweezers. Try expressing your grief, rage, fear, love within the tiny, out-of-breath, syllable-stingy form of haiku.

Natalie Parker-Lawrence's poems, concocted from the rushing, halting words of women caregivers of veterans, honor the essence. An image, a sound, a memory, a nightmare: capture it: in so few words.

"-Margaret Edson, author of Wit and winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. "Natalie Parker-Lawrence's book of hybrid haiku, householes, strikes a delightful balance between delicacy and power.

The poet also walks the tightrope between the personal and the universal, and she does so in such a way that the reader follows anxiously along, breathless and captivated. At turns gentle, at times brutal, but always poignant, Parker-Lawrence has the gift of the simple line that says much.

I hope this book portends the start of a long career of verse. "-Corey Mesler, author of Cock-a-Hoop, and Take the Longing from my Tongue.

"In short, impactful verse, Natalie Parker-Lawrence, shares the poignant and often gritty stories of Veteran Caregivers from around the country. The traditional haiku form evokes feelings about the natural world using a structure of stanzas and syllables.

As if by necessity, Parker-Lawrence departs from the traditional haiku to share first-hand, vivid and heart-breaking accounts of those who've survived war and those entangled in its aftermath. Their explosive, shattering and gut-wrenching experiences refuse to be confined by poetic tradition and structure.

No one touched by war remains whole. This collection has transformative power, taking us from despair to hope, if only in the knowledge that we are not alone.

"-Virginia Bryan is a retired attorney, arts advocate and free-lance writer. Her work appears in Distinctly Montana, Montana Magazine, Native Peoples and Yellowstone Valley Woman.

. "householes stitches the weightless Haiku to the gravity of all that proceeds war with thread borrowed from the women yoked in the collateral damage of the military-industrial complex.

"-C. (Christine) W.

Lockhart, PhD: LT, USCG (retired), Disabled Veteran & Caregiver, author of Blanket of Stars: Thru-Hiking the Camino de Santiago and Walking with Buddha: Pilgrimage on the Shikoku 88-Temple Trail. .