Tweetspeak Poetry

  • Home
  • FREE prompts
  • Earth Song
  • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • Teaching Tools
  • Books, Etc.
  • Patron Love

Poets and Poems: Laurie Klein and “House of 49 Doors”

By Glynn Young 3 Comments

Tulips Laurie Klein House of 49 Doors

Laurie Klein explores how our childhood is always with us

Begin with a house. Perhaps it’s the house you grew up in. Or the house you remember best as a child. I can remember lying awake at night, looking at how the hall light made a triangular shadow on my bedroom door, and forever associating that shadow with the murmur of my parents’ voices in the kitchen. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but hearing the murmur was always reassuring.

Memories float through that house, some vivid and some vague. The house is its own presence, but it also serves as a kind of table of contents or a framework surrounding what we really remember from our childhoods. And that’s usually the people — parents, siblings, friends, neighbors, and relatives. It’s odd that some of my sharpest memories of my maternal grandmother and my aunts, uncles and cousins are associated with my own house, not theirs. Perhaps it’s because our house was the gathering place for family celebrations and holiday dinners, and my relatives always stood out more clearly in a different environment from their own.

In House of 49 Doors: Poems, Laurie Klein starts and ends with a house, too — the Fowler house. It serves as the framework through which the memories of childhood and family are channeled. It’s the Fowler House that has 49 doors. You might, or night not, know what each door opens to.

The poems are “told” through one of two personas. Larkin is the child, owning and discovering the world around her. Eldergirl is the older, and presumably wiser, persona. Their poems weave back and forth from past to present, underscoring that the past is never really past and the present was once the unknown future. Both Larkin and Eldergirl are our hosts for a tour, which includes the premises, the hall, the first floor, the stairwell, the second floor, that tic, the roof, and even the laundry chute.

I didn’t grow up with a laundry chute; we didn’t have basements in New Orleans. Our oldest child, however, did have a laundry chute, and put everything imaginable down it. We learned that opening the chute door in the basement could almost be a lethal experience.

As Klein reminds us, childhood memories can erupt into our adult minds at the smallest prompting, or in the most unexpected ways. You might be walking along a shore, getting over the flu, seeing a snail on the sidewalk, or even swimming in a pool, and suddenly years disappear and you’re a child again.

While Swimming Laps, Eldergirl Remembers
Her Childhood Tree House

House of 49 Doors KleinOnce upon a tree, time shed
its yellowing gloves,

and in my freckled, believing
hands, those oblong leaves

became funnels for fireflies,
each tenderly rolled cone

painstakingly stitched
closed, with a twig. I remember,

now, during lightless times,
those teeming jewels no longer

afloat in autumn twilight. And,
like an exile, I keep feeling around for

the old contours. Shelter. Mostly,
the twinkling.

Some of the most moving poems are about “Uncle Dunkel.” We see him first through a child’s eyes; we’ll eventually see him through an adult’s understanding. Not every family has an Uncle Dunkel, but he’s instantly recognizable and familiar. He might be an uncle, a brother, or an older cousin, but he occupies, or comes to occupy, the position of family irregular, if not black sheep. Klein’s poems about him will make you smile in recognition and in memory.

Laurie Klein

Laurie Klein

Klein has been a songwriter, artist, actress, mime, clown, storyteller, audiobook narrator, teacher, director, writer, and editor. She wrote the classic praise song “I Love You, Lord” and received the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred. Nominated for both poetry and prose for the Pushcart Prize, she previously published the poetry collection Where the Sky Belongs. She blogs at Laurie Klein Scribe and lives in the Pacific Northwest.

House of 49 Doors surprises, saddens, and evokes more than one smile. Klein is opening her memory and her heart here. Memories of childhood can often be funny and sometimes painful. But we cling to the living, and we cling to the loss, and we’re human for knowing both.

Related:

Poets and Poems: Laurie Klein and Where the Sky Opens

Photo by ulricaloeb, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.

Browse more book reviews

How to Read a Poem by Tania Runyan

5 star

Buy How to Read a Poem Now!

How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.

“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”

—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish

  • Author
  • Recent Posts
Glynn Young
Glynn Young
Editor and Twitter-Party-Cool-Poem-Weaver at Tweetspeak Poetry
Glynn Young lives in St. Louis where he retired as the team leader for Online Strategy & Communications for a Fortune 500 company. Glynn writes poetry, short stories and fiction, and he loves to bike. He is the author of the Civil War romance Brookhaven, as well as Poetry at Work and the Dancing Priest Series. Find Glynn at Faith, Fiction, Friends.
Glynn Young
Latest posts by Glynn Young (see all)
  • Poets and Poems: L.L. Barkat and “Beyond the Glass” - May 22, 2025
  • A History of Children’s Stories: “The Haunted Wood” by Sam Leith - May 20, 2025
  • World War II Had Its Poets, Too - May 15, 2025

Filed Under: article, book reviews, Books, Poems, poetry, poetry reviews, Poets

Try Every Day Poems...

Comments

  1. bethany says

    April 3, 2024 at 6:49 pm

    What a beautiful image you’ve shared about that trianglular shadow on your childhood door and its connection with your parents’ voices. Thanks for sharing this with us.

    I’m currently reading Laurie’s collection and appreciate your take on it. She’s an incredible writer and artist. Love so much that firefly poem of hers. “Once upon a tree…” <3

    Reply
  2. Glynn says

    April 3, 2024 at 9:37 pm

    Bethany, thanks for the comment. It really is a beautiful collection.

    Reply
  3. Laurie Klein says

    April 10, 2024 at 6:26 pm

    Glynn, forgive me, I am late to the party. I hadn’t realized you’d already posted this. (Thanks, too, for posting on Amazon!)

    I too was arrested by that triangular shadow you describe.

    I am so grateful for your observations and responses, and for the time and care you’ve taken with my collection. And for this: What an elegant, generous, powerful closing line!

    “But we cling to the living, and we cling to the loss, and we’re human for knowing both.”

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Take How to Read a Poem

Get the Introduction, the Billy Collins poem, and Chapter 1

get the sample now

Welcome to Tweetspeak

New to Tweetspeak Poetry? Start here, in The Mischief Café. You're a regular? Check out our May Menu

Patron Love

❤️

Welcome a little patron love, when you help keep the world poetic.

The Graphic Novel

"Stunning, heartbreaking, and relevant illustrations"

Callie Feyen, teacher

read a summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

meet The Yellow Wallpaper characters

How to Write Poetry

Your Comments

  • Poets and Poems: L.L. Barkat and “Beyond the Glass” - Tweetspeak Poetry on Love, Etc.: Poems of Love, Laughter, Longing & Loss
  • Glynn on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Sandra Fox Murphy on World War II Had Its Poets, Too
  • Glynn on Poets and Poems: Kelly Belmonte and “The Mother of All Words”

Featured In

We're happy to have been featured in...

The Huffington Post

The Paris Review

The New York Observer

Tumblr Book News

Stay in Touch With Us

Categories

Learn to Write Form Poems

How to Write an Acrostic

How to Write a Ballad

How to Write a Catalog Poem

How to Write a Ghazal

How to Write a Haiku

How to Write an Ode

How to Write a Pantoum

How to Write a Rondeau

How to Write a Sestina

How to Write a Sonnet

How to Write a Villanelle

5 FREE POETRY PROMPTS

Get 5 FREE inbox poetry prompts from the popular book How to Write a Poem

Shakespeare Resources

Poetry Classroom: Sonnet 18

Common Core Picture Poems: Sonnet 73

Sonnet 104 Annotated

Sonnet 116 Annotated

Character Analysis: Romeo and Juliet

Character Analysis: Was Hamlet Sane or Insane?

Why Does Hamlet Wait to Kill the King?

10 Fun Shakespeare Resources

About Shakespeare: Poet and Playwright

Top 10 Shakespeare Sonnets

See all 154 Shakespeare sonnets in our Shakespeare Library!

Explore Work From Black Poets

About Us

  • • A Blessing for Writers
  • • Our Story
  • • Meet Our Team
  • • Literary Citizenship
  • • Poet Laura
  • • Poetry for Life: The 5 Vital Approaches
  • • T. S. Poetry Press – All Books
  • • Contact Us

Write With Us

  • • 5 FREE Poetry Prompts-Inbox Delivery
  • • 30 Days to Richer Writing Workshop
  • • Poetry Prompts
  • • Submissions
  • • The Write to Poetry

Read With Us

  • • All Our Books
  • • Book Club
  • • Every Day Poems—Subscribe! ✨
  • • Literacy Extras
  • • Poems to Listen By: Audio Series
  • • Poet-a-Day
  • • Poets and Poems
  • • 50 States Projects
  • • Charlotte Perkins Gilman Poems Library
  • • Edgar Allan Poe Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Blake Poems Arts & Experience Library
  • • William Shakespeare Sonnet Library

Celebrate With Us

  • • Poem on Your Pillow Day
  • • Poetic Earth Month
  • • Poet in a Cupcake Day
  • • Poetry at Work Day
  • • Random Acts of Poetry Day
  • • Take Your Poet to School Week
  • • Take Your Poet to Work Day

Gift Ideas

  • • Every Day Poems
  • • Our Shop
  • • Everybody Loves a Book!

Connect

  • • Donate
  • • Blog Buttons
  • • By Heart
  • • Shop for Tweetspeak Fun Stuff

Copyright © 2025 Tweetspeak Poetry · FAQ, Disclosure & Privacy Policy