Door to Door

Door to Door by Emma Walton Hamilton, reviewed by Alex Russell

Emma Walton Hamilton’s Door to Door is a short collection of poems portioned off into five distinct, interrelated sections: “Homeland”, “Relocation”, “The Swamp Angel”, “Inside Out,” and “Prism.” Varying in their compositional style – from free verse, observational poems to concise, rhyming pieces, conversational to experimental – Hamilton’s work retains a sense of earned wisdom, a careful patience with life, and a dedicated measure of emotional distance from some of the subject matter in the book. 

It is this slightly cold, somewhat detached tone – coupled with an artfully calculated language – that enables the better part of Door to Door to pick apart the dry eccentricities of life, from deciding what to wear every morning to the messy and contradicting nature of daily news and media, without lingering too long on any one topic or idea. 

Literally going “door to door,” Hamilton’s collection of poems weaves through different styles and sources of inspiration, wearing the latter on its sleeve.

Writing after poets Billy Collins, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Frank O’Hara, Hamilton pays genuine tribute to these writers, taking the time to pause in each creator’s respective aesthetic and chip away at a segment of her own personal life experience – illuminating it with self-knowledge and poetic craft. 

Movement, transience, impermanence – these are not just images or jumping-off points; Hamilton dives fully into these states and develops them as organic, fully-rounded themes.

“The Commute” is among the book’s lengthier pieces, concretely – and in naturalistic, Beat fashion – filtering through “the railway station,” “the city,” “the newspaper office,” all the way through “the same eternal round of events—/Murders, burglaries, suicides/by pistol, razor, rope, or poison,” condensing myriad daily observations into something crystalline. Hamilton carries the reader through physical places, past solid scenes inside familiar locations, all the while building on the book’s core themes.

“The Commute” starts with motion and ends in motion, as the narrator flies back “by rail/to my beloved swamp,/where I labor until dusk/overlooked only by an occasional crow.” In this small but pertinent fashion, Hamilton shines a light on transience as a kind of isolation or exile; not just a process, but a quagmirical state of mind. In fact, loneliness and solitude in its varying forms pops up time and again.

In “Spring Cleaning,” Hamilton recounts, in rhyme-free, matter-of-fact verse, the “residue of ten thousand meals,” “the sofa,” “every little room,” recontextualizing the living space she shares with her husband as a dangerous, stolid alcove – “our entrenchment.” 

Door to Door, despite its themes and overall impressions, features several poems with a strong sense of mise-en-scène, situating the narrator firmly in a specific setting – whether corporeal or emotional.

The seven-piece section near the volume’s middle, titled “The Swamp Angel,” powerfully removes the reader from wherever they might be and transplants them to Hamilton’s swamp – a place of nature, silence, and privacy. The seventh poem in this section, “Omega,” viscerally places the reader alongside Hamilton in her small, bog-surrounded home.

“The morning glory vines/had commenced peeping in at the front windows,” a place overwhelmingly abundant in “birds and trees,” “perched on the brink/of the palisades.” Hamilton’s physical location has her reevaluate her spot in life – a healthy, transformative episode of self-doubt and an eventual return to other people:

“But here was I/a single bit of humanity/trying to live alone and away from my kind…A hermit is one who tries to be a tree,/and draw nourishment from one spot/when he’s really a deal more./A bear is not so foolish as to try and live among foxes,/neither should a man try to live among trees…So I left my hermitage,/I presume forever.”

Earlier in the book, in “Relocation,” Hamilton shrinks her perspective from places and household objects to other creatures – “A Moon Snail, accommodating someone else’s eggs./A family of Slipper Snails, clinging to a Scallop./A Quahog Clam, teeming with seawater and sand. A micro-ocean.” This piece, consisting of just four stanzas, is a concise, illustrative example of connectivity and reflection. The writer sees her inner struggles in “a cluster of treasures” on the beach, “each its own biosphere.” 

“The host shells are otherwise empty,/neither landlord nor tenants having anticipated the tide,” a mournful, nuanced assessment of places that once possessed occupants; the signs of an old existence.

“I played God for a moment,/placing each one gently back in the surf–/cleaving to hope.” This encapsulates Hamilton’s strengths as a writer, strengths that are key to understanding and appreciating Door to Door.

Writing poetry from observations, experiences, and inspiration – whatever these might be – is a very old, at times therapeutic form of art, allowing the writer to reanalyze or make peace with something painful, difficult, or pervasive in their life. Playing God with the “host shells” on the beach represents the personification of her literary vocation  – a look into her process and underlying motivation.

With recurring reflections into her daily living, there comes a small measure of peace. “I fiddle with my hair, pick or pluck/at minor divertissements, and compose myself/in prelude to the day.”  

It is this ability to focus, in and out, on things, creatures, instances, scenes, and places – big and small – that characterizes her deeply personal, yet universal, and artfully balanced poetry. Door to Door is an opportunity to explore the occasional “beauty and harmony” in grounded, ordinary lives – with danger and chaos “just outside the margins.”

Emma Walton Hamilton 

Door to Door

Published 2022, Andrews McMeel Publishing

Alex Russell earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from George Mason University and now works in the field of journalism and publishing. He has contributed poetry to a variety of literary magazines and art journals, such as The Elevation Review, 300 Days of Sun, and The Ignatian Literary Magazine. His contributions to the Falls Church News-Press, a locally owned newspaper in the Washington, DC area, can be found online at fcnp.com.

Our weekly reads (November 27-December 3)

Here’s what our writers and editors are reading this week:

Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the Kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their infant son with meager subsistence. Then, on a day like any other, Kino emerges from the sea with a pearl as large as a sea gull's egg, as "perfect as the moon." With the pearl comes hope, the promise of comfort and of security....

A story of classic simplicity, based on a Mexican folk tale, The Pearl explores the secrets of man's nature, the darkest depths of evil, and the luminous possibilities of love. (Amazon synopsis)

Door to Door is a celebration of accident and grace in a world where wonder is too often supplanted by obligation. This collection of poems is split into four parts roughly corresponding to the author’s life phases, touching on her experiences of childhood, family, motherhood, and aging, as well as her reflections on art, love, loss, and the mysteries of the natural world.

Award-winning, best-selling author Emma Walton Hamilton’s love of language is evident throughout; her voice is playful, at times reverential, and always interested in the magic and imagery of the subjects she tackles. (Amazon synopsis)

On the coast of rural Newfoundland, Hannah Fitzgerald's mother has lived her life in near total isolation. When Hannah returns to the lonely saltbox house to prepare her mother for the transition into assisted living, her childhood home is anything but welcoming. Dilapidated from years of hoarding and neglect, the walls are crumbling, leaving Hannah’s wellness crumbling along with them.

While packing her mother's things, Hannah discovers a trap door to the house’s attic, the one she believed for most of her life had been permanently sealed shut. Blinded by curiosity, Hannah enters the attic and finds a mysterious bedroom riddled with dark secrets. Desperate to know more, Hannah begins to scramble for answers, combing the house for clues that may lead her to the truth.

Hannah must navigate through the violent outbursts of her senile mother, the prying questions of a nosy hospice nurse, and the rage of the coastal wind that threatens the structure of the house. Piece by piece, she assembles a picture of her mother’s not-so-distant past—a twisted tangle of infatuation, lies, and maybe even murder.

The Woman in the Attic is a claustrophobic psychological thriller wrought with suspense. This novel will put you on the edge of your seat . . . and make you wary of the unused spaces collecting dust in your home. (Amazon synopsis)

When did we begin to be as self-centered as we are today? At what point did we expect to have the right to determine our own lives? When did we first ask the question, How can I be free? It all began in a quiet university town in Germany in the 1790s, when a group of playwrights, poets, and writers put the self at center stage in their thinking, their writing, and their lives. This brilliant circle included the famous poets Goethe, Schiller, and Novalis; the visionary philosophers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; the contentious Schlegel brothers; and, in a wonderful cameo, Alexander von Humboldt. And at the heart of this group was the formidable Caroline Schlegel, who sparked their dazzling conversations about the self, nature, identity, and freedom.

The French revolutionaries may have changed the political landscape of Europe, but the young Romantics incited a revolution of the mind that transformed our world forever. We are still empowered by their daring leap into the self, and by their radical notions of the creative potential of the individual, the highest aspirations of art and science, the unity of nature, and the true meaning of freedom. We also still walk the same tightrope between meaningful self-fulfillment and destructive narcissism, between the rights of the individual and our responsibilities toward our community and future generations. At the heart of this inspiring book is the extremely modern tension between the dangers of selfishness and the thrilling possibilities of free will. (Amazon synopsis)

Charles Dickens wrote The Life of Our Lord during the years 1846-1849, just about the time he was completing David Copperfield. In this charming, simple retelling of the life of Jesus Christ, adapted from the Gospel of St. Luke, Dickens hoped to teach his young children about religion and faith. Since he wrote it exclusively for his children, Dickens refused to allow publication.


For eighty-five years the manuscript was guarded as a precious family secret, and it was handed down from one relative to the next. When Dickens died in 1870, it was left to his sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth. From there it fell to Dickens's son, Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, with the admonition that it should not be published while any child of Dickens lived.
Just before the 1933 holidays, Sir Henry, then the only living child of Dickens, died, leaving his father's manuscript to his wife and children. He also bequeathed to them the right to make the decision to publish The Life of Our Lord. By majority vote, Sir Henry's widow and children decided to publish the book in London. In 1934, Simon & Schuster published the first American edition, which became one of the year's biggest bestsellers. (Amazon synopsis)