The Sorrowing House

Lydia Forssander-Song is a sessional instructor in the English
Department at Trinity Western University, Langley, B.C.

The Sorrowing House is made up of four parts: Metaphor for the Design of
Wings, Repertoire of Longing, Winter Songs, and Afterimages.

“Song of the Beloved” speaks to the expressions of grief, sorrow,
and loneliness that pervade the collection’s first two sections:
“There was a woman who went mad because she could not wash her dead
husband’s hair, pressed her cheek upon a pane of glass to comfort the
sorrowing house.” Lehr’s work transcends the darkness through
references to birds and angels, the use of light imagery, and a focus on
children and family. References to religion, God, worship, and prayer
underpin the poet’s descriptions of both loss and redemption/renewal.

Although some of the poems take the form of e-mails (“E-mail 1” and
“E-mail 2”), folksongs (“Matilde”), and children’s
songs/rhymes (“Blessings,” “Springtime,” “True Love”), most
are prose poems and lyric poems that do not pay much attention to rhythm
and rhyme. Lehr’s attention to imagery and her use of songs in

this, her first collection of poetry, is especially notable.