S6 E8: Celebrating Helen Hoyt: A Summer Conversation between Sarah and Rebecca
It was a golden afternoon in the heart of summer when we met to celebrate a quiet but powerful voice in American poetry—Helen Hoyt. As sisters and co-hosts of The Book Dialogue, we’ve often found ourselves drawn to poets who speak across time, whose words seem to reach out and take our hands. Helen Hoyt is one of those voices.
Our connection began months earlier on Rebecca’s Reading Room, where we recorded a joint recitation of Annunciation—a poem that shimmered with quiet awe and grace. That reading opened a door into Helen’s poetic world, one marked by restraint, dignity, and deep interior vision.
What followed was something we never expected.
Rebecca received a handwritten letter from Helen Hoyt’s granddaughter, Lulii Lyman, who had listened to our reading. Enclosed with her note was a rare copy of A Girl in the City, a collection of Hoyt’s poems written between 1912 and 1919 during her years in Chicago, and published decades later in 1970. Lulii’s words have stayed with us.
“Rebecca, I know my Grandmother would love for you to have one of her poetry books. She would also appreciate that you have kept her name and writings alive. Love, Lulii.”
That generous act became the seed of a new conversation. On a sunlit day, we gathered again—this time to read Ellis Park, one of the poems from A Girl in the City. It was a deeply personal moment for Rebecca. She was living in Edmonton at the same age Helen was when she wrote this poem, and she found herself walking the same emotional terrain described in the poem. Helen’s voice, so clear and interior, mirrored feelings Remember remembered from that time in her life.
Our conversation, captured in this latest episode of The Book Dialogue, is not only about poetry—it’s about memory, legacy, and the invisible threads that connect us across generations and geography.
This post marks the beginning of a new series where we’ll continue to explore Helen Hoyt’s work. Through her poems, we are reminded that even quiet voices carry forward, shaping lives and lighting paths long after they are written.
Stay tuned for more reflections and episodes. We are honoured to walk alongside Helen Hoyt’s voice, one poem at a time.
Ellis Park
Little park that I pass through,
I carry off a piece of you
Every morning hurrying down
To my work-day in the town;
Carry you for country there
To make the city ways more fair.
I take your trees,
And your breeze,
Your greenness,
Your cleanness,
Some of your shade, some of your sky,
Some of your calm as I go by;
Your flowers to trim
The pavements grim;
Your space for room in the jostled street
And grass for carpet to my feet.
Your fountains take and sweet bird calls
To sing me from my office walls.
All that I can see
I carry off with me.
But you never miss my theft,
So much treasure you have left.
As I find you, fresh at morning,
So I find you, home returning —
Nothing lacking from your grace.
All your riches wait in place
For me to borrow
On the morrow.
Do you hear this praise of you,
Little park that I pass through?
Sarah & Rebecca
Music by Epidemic Sound
Our New Home By Sleeping Vines
https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/ReJuTi457q/
Smell of Morning Coffee By Franz Gordon https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/f1gXJ8DevC/
