: A Year in Motherhood
I spent much of 2018 investing in motherhood鈥攏ot as a personal experience (I am not a mother, nor, at the moment, do I wish to be)鈥攂ut as a prismatic experience with intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and political facets worthy of consideration far beyond the niche realm of 鈥渨omen鈥檚 experience鈥� to which it鈥檚 still so often relegated. This year I read books in all genres that approached motherhood (and grandmother-hood) from multiple fronts, and I want to share with you in a few words what they offered, what they mothered in me
鈥淲hether I want kids is a secret I keep from myself鈥攊t is the greatest secret I keep from myself.鈥澨�
Mother of indecision. Mother of reveling in indecision. Mother of coming to your other senses. Mother of chance. Mother of giving yourself over to time in ways we鈥檙e normally taught to fight.
鈥淭his is a love poem. / I鈥檒l prove it to you. / Let me fill your cheek / with my cheek.鈥�
Mother of obsession. Mother of听parasitic love. Mother of spare lines and unsettling desire. Mother of wanting more and more and more.
鈥淲hat significance, if any, does the fact that mammals gestate inside another body have for the mind?鈥�
Mother of听womb philosophy. Mother of embodied technology. Mother of doubt and gendered questioning. Mother of thinking bodies.听
鈥淲hen I miss her, I open my popout map. / I spill my face into the streets of Tehran. / 鈥� I say Karaj like I鈥檓 telling you your future.鈥�
Mother of lyrical spells. Mother of metaphysical inheritance. Mother of death as shape-shifting and memory as incantation. Mother of conjuring the self.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 know if I can define myself anymore, now that I鈥檓 your mother. You鈥檝e consumed me. Being your mother has cooked me right down to the bone.鈥�
Mother of inherited memory. Mother of nature in context. Mother of naming. Mother of reclaiming history鈥檚 weapons. Mother of travelling with child, of carrying familial trauma, of birthing new language.
鈥淟ike a daughter who has not forgotten / the world of her mother鈥檚 body.鈥�
Mother of squelching shame with love. Mother of chicken bones and homemade clothes and trailer parks and Southern silt. Mother of generational understanding. Mother of women making their own beauty.听
鈥淚 am the mama weep beneath the fold, // that paragraph you skip, the wink of gold / inside a rotted mouth, that shredding note / of grief.鈥澨�
Mother of persona and channeled tongues. Mother of history鈥檚 whispers and sunk bodies. Mother of news ignored. Mother of grief on and off camera. Mother of moan as song. Mother of ugly as tool.听
: 鈥淏itingly Unsentimental Explorations鈥�
听(Ecco, 2018)
Emily Jungmin Yoon鈥檚 ambitious debut on the history of Korean wartime sex slavery and its ramifications for a diasporic Asian woman writing today, was among the most masterful new releases of 2018: burningly clear, burnished with authorial maturity, each poem powerfully self-sufficient yet necessary to the whole. Yoon highlights connections among multiple forms of violence, including colonialism, distorted media portrayals of the 鈥渆xotic,鈥� and even ecologic destruction, reminding us violence begets violence, entangling all in its web of complicity. But 2017-18 was rich with terrific new releases, among which Duy Doan鈥檚听听(Yale University Press, 2017) and听听(St. Augustine鈥檚 Press, 2017) also stand out as bitingly unsentimental explorations of familial and national epidemics of violence.
Two older bilingual anthologies that ensnared me this year with their enduring timeliness were听听(1985) and听听(2007). The former is a delicately illustrated pamphlet of tanka by Japanese Americans in WWII internment camps regarding their experiences. The latter upliftingly reminds us that the tradition of Vietnamese women鈥檚 poetry is a long and strong one, a muscularly winding she-dragon whose tail we have not yet seen.
: 鈥淗alf the Pleasure of Reading is Remembering鈥�
Is it clich茅 to say a collection of poems has something for everyone? No? Good.听听(Black Lawrence Press, 2017), a collection of sonnets by Simone Muench and Dean Rader, qualifies. First, the premise: sonnets with stolen first lines, written collaboratively by Muench and Rader. The mind boggles. Half the pleasure of reading is remembering, every few pages, that these tight, resonant, bursting-with-life works are mind-melds. The other half is the work itself: there鈥檚 sound music (鈥淭his bone-burned body鈥攕kin blade, flesh fade, / dust of its dust, cut and crushed, fine flint rust鈥攊s neither flask nor cage鈥�), wrenchingly beautiful elevated language (鈥淲elcome elegy, / here is your country, stuck on its own pole star, / and here we are: the last, the lost, the hanging tree鈥�), and down-home honesty (鈥淟et鈥檚 be honest, Reader, we鈥檙e both more at home / with dick jokes than iambic pentameter鈥�). There鈥檚 even a dead-horse poem (if that鈥檚 your thing). Turn to the back for a bibliography of first lines (or what I call a 鈥渞eading list鈥�). This is a book to savor鈥攖he kind that will have you snapping pictures of poems and sending them to people you love.
: 鈥淪atisfying Melancholies鈥�
I've learned to enter new poetry from Ada Lim贸n with implicit trust, and听听(Milkweed Editions, 2018) amply rewarded that. The book is drenched in the colors and smells of growing things, and as often with dying things. In poems that deal with infertility, grief, ecological dread, and political despair, she has her fingers in the soil, tending to life: "...some days I can see the point / in growing something, even if / it's just to say I cared enough."听
Devin Kelly's听听(CCM Press, 2017) brought on a satisfying melancholy, a comforting sadness like a winter blanket. These lines encompass my entire personal religion: "There is too much beauty here / for this to mean nothing."听
Ruth Awad's听听(Southern Indiana Review Press, 2017) [Editor鈥檚 Note: We did not ask Nilsen to review one of our own, that鈥檚 just how good this book is!]听is a lovely, moving document of her father's experiences in the Lebanese Civil War and her family's story after his subsequent exodus to the U.S. Focusing on moments subtle rather than explosive, the book is profound in its personal insights: "I don't know what makes a country a country. / If the sea softening an edge of land is enough / to say, This is mine and that is yours."
Reviewer Bios:
Rochelle Hurt听is the author of听In Which I Play the Runaway听(Barrow Street, 2016) and听The Rusted City: A Novel in Poems听(White Pine, 2014). Her work has been included in the听Best New Poets听anthology series and she's been awarded prizes and fellowships from听Crab Orchard Review,听Arts & Letters,听Hunger Mountain,听Poetry International, Vermont Studio Center, Jentel, and Yaddo. Hurt is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Slippery Rock University, and she runs the review site听The Bind.
Jenna Le听authored听Six Rivers听(NYQ Books, 2011) and听A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora听(Indolent Books, 2018; 1st ed. pub. by Anchor & Plume, 2016), which won second place in the 2017 Elgin Awards. Her poetry appears in听AGNI Online, Bellevue Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review,听Massachusetts Review, and听West Branch.听
Brenna Lemieux听is the author of the full-length poetry collection听The Gospel of Household Plants听(Quercus Review Press, 2015) and the chapbook听Blankness, Melancholy, and Other Ways of Dying听(Five Oaks Press, 2017). Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in听Willow Springs,听Printers Row,听The MacGuffin, and elsewhere. Lemieux lives in Chicago.听
David Nilsen听is a freelance writer living in Ohio. He is a National Book Critics Circle member, and his听 literary reviews and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in听The Rumpus,听Gulf Coast,听The Millions,听The Georgia Review, and numerous other respected publications.
