Only House on the Left

In The Only House on the Left Scott Hanna strips his Appalachian home, "by a river men once named beautiful," to its foundation - one of memory and longing. He knows "something is broken" in this place, and these tender poems of "memory digging in" not only seek reclamation but also wonder "how far back is far enough?" Hanna's "alive, unfiltered, and beautiful" debut collection "all tastes so goddamned good." These poems take us on a full-circle journey - home. With stark imagery of the Ohio Valley and an authentic exploration of all "the questions the living keep living," they encourage us to remember, to embody, the truth of this existence, our mutual "need for someone to hold us up."

-CJ Farnsworth, author, If You Keep Making That Shameface...

As all poets who live downstream from Pittsburgh know, they write under the shadow of James Wright. There are moments here where even a simple phrase stops the heart the way a Wright poem so often does. From the title poem, for example, we read: "turning toward words we would never end up saying, always turning toward the empty winter of now." These are brave poems, unafraid to tackle fear and doubt, unafraid in their many elegiac remembrances that meticulously observe the dynamics of loss and dying with honesty and conviction.

-Marc Harshman, Poet Laureate of West Virginia

The Only House on the Left casts a sensory spell, unfurling a synchrony of Upper Appalachian generational experiences shadowed by iron-hard grief and a strange joyous glow of "being alive, unfiltered, and beautiful" inside specific place-time. Hanna's detailed narrative poems take haunting lyrical turns, navigating the dynamic territories of home where milestones continue "ticking by like fence posts in the rearview." Never will we fully separate from the front porches, wrecked kitchens, cradles, coalfields, suburbs, deathbeds, creek banks, and starscapes of our lives. Indeed, this book invites us to recognize our most immediate, vulnerable selves while also accepting that existence stretches far "beyond our seeing / beyond our knowing."

-Sherry Cook Stanforth, Managing Editor, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel