The Trouble with Being a Childless Only Child

by Michelle Meyer

Overview

Written after the unexpected death of her mother, Michelle Meyer's The Trouble with Being a Childless Only Child takes root in the body, exploring loss and trauma along with the sexual and social dynamics of one woman's place among men. Part epistolary and part memoir, Meyer questions her own role in creating the boundaries that defined her mother's life while reaching, often in vain, for clarity through the fog of loss. Serving as both tribute and penance, each poem is a funeral song versed with longing, and ultimately hope, for spiritual release.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781960329288
Publisher:	Cornerstone Press
Publication date:	02/15/2024
Pages:	104
Sales rank:	1,074,166
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.25(d)

About the Author

Michelle Meyer is the author of The Book of She (2021). Her poems have appeared in Under Her Eye: A Blackspot Books Anthology, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Nebulous, Remington Review, Tabula Rasa Review, Welter Online, and Zoetic, among others. In addition, Michelle is a worldwide house and pet sitter who especially loves cats. She lives in Western Wisconsin.

Editorial Reviews

"Haunted, plaintive, and often darkly afflicted, the deeply felt poems of Michelle Meyer's The Trouble with Being a Childless Only Child rise from a great depth of human emotion-clear, forceful poems that are searingly personal. This is a book about breakage, about betrayal, about grief and loss. Ultimately, it's a richly rewarding book, one about healing and redemption, a book sutured with forgiveness and bound in love."

-Robert Hedin, author of At the Great Door of Mourning

"Michelle Meyer takes many issues of family head-on and offers up some deeply emotional and powerful poems. Her relationship to her mother is at the heart of this moving collection as she considers her life with her and without her. There is no poor-me here, rather a loving and clear look at what she was given and what she's done with it. While there is grief in this collection, there is a clarity and acceptance in words that are wise and earned. I loved reading these poems and know I will return to them again and again."

-Mary Logue, author of Heart Wood: Poems

"Michelle Meyer writes about grief with honesty, generosity, and the kind of stripped-down beauty that makes you stop and catch your breath. By turns delicate, brutal, bitterly funny, and haunting, these poems capture the evolving ways that loss and love intertwine."

-Jacqueline West, author of Candle and Pins

"When Michelle Meyer said she didn't like dog-eared pages, I took it as a dare and won-she has so many. I wondered how she could run the title's theme over a whole manuscript, and watched her do it-she sings and sings for her mother and finds herself in the process. These poems are painful dirges and celebratory wakes and, best of all, sometimes both at once. This book is so good, with such mature vision and no-nonsense voice, I want to see her next book right now."

-John Graber, author of Thanksgiving Dawn: Poems 1970-2008

"Writing about love, loss, and grief is very easy to do poorly. For Michelle Meyer to do it so effectively and effortlessly in these poems is a testament to her brilliance as a writer. She brings moments of her mother and her own story to life again, all the while ignited by the very real and tangible fear of a life being forgotten. On the contrary, what Michelle has done is crafted a portrait through these poems that has been immortalized here, impossible for any reader to forget."

-Emma Snyder, co-founder & editor-in-chief of Tabula Rasa Review

From the Publisher