Home Front by Anne Johnson Mullin

As a five-year-old, the author experienced WWII in the snug embrace of her grandparents’ home, with only minor disruptions. Memories – confusing, humorous, always vivid — led to these poems.

Home Front is like a chorale of three generations, dug from the basements and attics of one family’s home in “the duration” of World War II. Its poems are like harmonizing songs in perfect pitch, unflinching details that might have been forgotten by anyone but Anne Mullin, who expresses them in variations of free verse. There are painful memories: gold stars in windows. air raid drills with black shades. young refugees in school rooms, bigotry on the playground, and other puzzles for a young child’s mind. There are joyful thoughts: sledding with her mother in a park before dark, her father’s singing at his shaving mirror . . .his verses recalled for decades. There is the smell of her grandfather’s pipe, the feel of her grandmother’s chair, and the drone of airplanes overhead in the night. There are details of salvaging cans and paper, rationing food and gas, saving small change for war bonds, receiving letters from the front, and having them suddenly stop. All are heartfelt portraits of a close family during a grim time in America, from “the house we dwell in always.” A beautiful, unforgettable collection of poems.
–Sarah Jane Woolf-Wade, author of Nightsong, Down the Bristol Road, and Wolf Moon Down

Anne Johnson Mullin’s latest book, Home Front, is wonderfully written. She uses just the right words and images to paint a picture of a time that many have forgotten or never knew, “the duration” of World War Two: ration books, Spam, and loved ones far away. Her poems are filled with personal stories and intriguing characters. Miss Weddleton, the first grade teacher was “worried and nervous because her fiancé flew airplanes/that dropped bombs in Europe.” Grandmother, back in 1915, had taken out a 30-year mortgage on her own. Grandfather, a firefighter, often did a soft-shoe routine while helping with the dishes. Mother starred in a drama put on by the women’s club and ”on stage she was someone / I almost knew from family stories.” And Father, who sang every morning as he shaved, “in the bathroom mirror/ you would lift me//so I could see the two of us grinning at each other/no one has sung that way to me since.”“Love Song for My Father” is, perhaps, my favorite in this treasure-trove of poems.
–Eve Forti, author of Holding My Breath, Beautiful, and The Color of Winter