Size of Your Joy: Poems
For every woman who's ever held joy and sorrow in the same breath—this debut is a tender, powerful reminder that you are not alone​.

The Size of Your Joy is an intimate and empowering exploration of the complex and often contradictory experiences of womanhood, offering an unflinching look at how identity, resilience, and self-worth are shaped by the intersections of love, grief, and longing.

Through the birth of her daughter, the vital yet complicated relationships between the women in her life, and the realities of being a woman in the world, Powers reflects on how ideas of beauty, desire, and shame are quietly passed from one generation to the next, and what it takes to break those cycles. She examines the hunger—for belonging, autonomy, and joy—that women are taught to suppress, while imagining a path forward defined by liberation and self-acceptance.

A celebration of reclamation, The Size of Your Joy asks how we might carry both sorrow and joy, loss and love, as dual forces that shape the stories we inherit and the lives we choose to create. This collection invites readers to embrace joy not as the absence of struggle, but as an act of defiance and hope.
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Size of Your Joy: Poems
For every woman who's ever held joy and sorrow in the same breath—this debut is a tender, powerful reminder that you are not alone​.

The Size of Your Joy is an intimate and empowering exploration of the complex and often contradictory experiences of womanhood, offering an unflinching look at how identity, resilience, and self-worth are shaped by the intersections of love, grief, and longing.

Through the birth of her daughter, the vital yet complicated relationships between the women in her life, and the realities of being a woman in the world, Powers reflects on how ideas of beauty, desire, and shame are quietly passed from one generation to the next, and what it takes to break those cycles. She examines the hunger—for belonging, autonomy, and joy—that women are taught to suppress, while imagining a path forward defined by liberation and self-acceptance.

A celebration of reclamation, The Size of Your Joy asks how we might carry both sorrow and joy, loss and love, as dual forces that shape the stories we inherit and the lives we choose to create. This collection invites readers to embrace joy not as the absence of struggle, but as an act of defiance and hope.
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Size of Your Joy: Poems

Size of Your Joy: Poems

by Elise Powers
Size of Your Joy: Poems

Size of Your Joy: Poems

by Elise Powers

Paperback

$18.00 
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    Available for Pre-Order. This item will be released on April 21, 2026

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Overview

For every woman who's ever held joy and sorrow in the same breath—this debut is a tender, powerful reminder that you are not alone​.

The Size of Your Joy is an intimate and empowering exploration of the complex and often contradictory experiences of womanhood, offering an unflinching look at how identity, resilience, and self-worth are shaped by the intersections of love, grief, and longing.

Through the birth of her daughter, the vital yet complicated relationships between the women in her life, and the realities of being a woman in the world, Powers reflects on how ideas of beauty, desire, and shame are quietly passed from one generation to the next, and what it takes to break those cycles. She examines the hunger—for belonging, autonomy, and joy—that women are taught to suppress, while imagining a path forward defined by liberation and self-acceptance.

A celebration of reclamation, The Size of Your Joy asks how we might carry both sorrow and joy, loss and love, as dual forces that shape the stories we inherit and the lives we choose to create. This collection invites readers to embrace joy not as the absence of struggle, but as an act of defiance and hope.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781771684408
Publisher: Central Avenue Publishing
Publication date: 04/21/2026
Pages: 128
Product dimensions: 5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Elise Powers received a BA in English Literature from Western Washington University. Her poems reflect on identity, womanhood, and the ordinary moments that make up a life. Her work has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies including Gather and Only Poems, and has been shortlisted for the Central Avenue Poetry Prize, awarded second place in the Black Horse Review Poetry Contest, and nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology. She lives in Seattle with her husband and daughter, where she writes, collects sea glass, and savors life’s tender joys. Find more of her work on Instagram @elisepowerspoet and on Substack at Two Raw Sugars.

Read an Excerpt

I Do Not Order Two Raw Sugars In My Americano

But the barista at my local spot
doesn't know that. Or, she doesn't care.
I've tried to tell her,
but she sees my face and laces my cup
like a grandmother
who won't take no for an answer.
Despite myself, I soften into this small insistence.
Did you know a black coffee
has just two calories?
Add cream and it swells to forty two.
Sugar, and it surges another hundred.
This information matters only when
the size of your body is more important
than the size of your joy.
Yet, even when we don't ask for it,
even when we insist against it,
joy always finds us again.
One day soon it will sweeten your coffee,
or curl into the crook of your elbow,
of nest in your magnolia,
and you'll say, yes, yes, I remember.

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