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When a parent is poet, the child becomes a muse—often wondrous, sometimes terrifying. This anthology explores the vast emotional landscape of parenting, from the serenity of innocent naps to the howling anguish of early deaths. Here are poetic mothers and fathers (and children), across cultures both ancient and modern, trying to make sense—and art—from the sublime mystery and relentless grind of living with children.
Never has there been a collection that so honestly speaks to the parents’ perspective, where moments of tenderness—such as a father abandoning "the most divinely inspired poem" to feed his son—have their counterpoints:
—a nursing mother-poet, who has not slept in 400 nights, going "gradually mad" or —a mother’s realization that her daughter would "drive nails into my tongue"
Remember those older friends we used to envy,
brilliant and glittering with beauty,
Who refused to have children,
not about to sacrifice their careers;
Who refused the mess, the entrapment,
as we toiled over chores and homework,
worried about measles and money—
Have you seen them lately?
They no longer converse in sparkling cadenzas.
They are obsessed with their little dog who piddles on the Oriental rug,
who throws up on the bedspread…
They way they caress him makes you fairly ill;
the way they call him, "Baby."
from "Children" by Carolyn Kizer
Michael Wiegers is the managing editor at Copper Canyon Press. His most recent anthology is Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (Copper Canyon, 2002), co-edited with Monica de la Torre.
Contributors Include:
John Balaban Marvin Bell Kay Boyle Norman Dubie Susan Griffin Jim Harrison Ho Xuan Huong Rolf Jacobsen Richard Jones Carolyn Kizer Thomas McGrath W.S. Merwin Alberto Ríos Ann Stanford Su Tung-p’o T’ao Chien C.D. Wright
The inaugural volume in the Copper Canyon Press Back to Books Series
| Introduction | ||
| You Taught Me | 3 | |
| The Hand: "Brightness Falls from the Air" | 4 | |
| Against Writing about Children | 5 | |
| The Doll Believers | 7 | |
| Muse | 8 | |
| What effect has your new son had on your writing life? | 9 | |
| After Kuo Chu-pu's Poems | 10 | |
| The Murmur | 11 | |
| Three Bodies | 12 | |
| A Naturalist | 13 | |
| King's Daughters, Home for Unwed Mothers, 1948 | 14 | |
| June 20 | 16 | |
| " ... as soft and as pink as a nursery ..." | 17 | |
| Childish | 20 | |
| Maternity | 21 | |
| What Parents Do Not Yet Know | 22 | |
| What We Need Words For | 23 | |
| The Thermos | 25 | |
| What No One Could Have Told Them | 26 | |
| Daughter | 29 | |
| The Last Thing I Say | 30 | |
| Reading a Story to My Child | 31 | |
| A Daughter's Fever | 36 | |
| Pittsburgh | 38 | |
| Magic Words to Cure a Sick Child - an Inuit song | 40 | |
| The Windows | 41 | |
| Three Pieces of Candy | 42 | |
| Don't Forget | 43 | |
| Father's Song | 44 | |
| Mother to Son | 45 | |
| Lynching and Burning | 47 | |
| Childhood | 48 | |
| The American Century | 49 | |
| Unnoticed | 50 | |
| The Czar's Last Christmas Letter: A Barn in the Urals | 52 | |
| Night Strategies | 55 | |
| Words for My Daughter | 57 | |
| Marvelous Father | 60 | |
| The Freight | 62 | |
| "We started home, my son and I" | 64 | |
| Scolding My Sons | 65 | |
| Natural History | 66 | |
| Poem | 69 | |
| Son | 70 | |
| Mothers | 71 | |
| Sor Juana's Last Dream | 72 | |
| Letter to an Absent Son | 73 | |
| The Family Group | 74 | |
| I Sit | 75 | |
| On Nursing | 76 | |
| Mother and Son | 79 | |
| The Gift | 80 | |
| Seed | 81 | |
| Mothers, Daughters | 82 | |
| Another Poem for Mothers | 84 | |
| Cigarettes | 86 | |
| Two, Hers and Mine | 87 | |
| The Cabbage | 88 | |
| A Grandfather's Last Letter | 89 | |
| After Tomasito's Departure | 92 | |
| Notes to My Daughters | 93 | |
| Children | 98 | |
| The Condition of Women | 101 | |
| Yesterday | 102 | |
| The Storm | 104 | |
| Last Will and Testament | 105 | |
| Why Your Father Cried | 106 | |
| Born into a World Knowing | 108 | |
| I Thought Back and | 109 | |
| Ending with a Line from Lear | 110 | |
| She Came to Say Farewell | 111 | |
| Provenance | 112 | |
| If I Leave You | 118 | |
| Comice | 125 | |
| Not Writing Poems about Children | 126 | |
| We Have Known | 128 | |
| Time, Place, and Parenthood | 129 | |
| Celebration | 130 | |
| About the Poets | 132 | |
| About the Editor | 139 |
Overview
When a parent is poet, the child becomes a muse—often wondrous, sometimes terrifying. This anthology explores the vast emotional landscape of parenting, from the serenity of innocent naps to the howling anguish of early deaths. Here are poetic mothers and fathers (and children), across cultures both ancient and modern, trying to make sense—and art—from the sublime mystery and relentless grind of living with children.
Never has there been a collection that so honestly speaks to ...