And finally a new mother whose words she examines with suspicion, but the woman brushes past, opening her arms, looking with eyes that “say it all –/Stop searching for evidence to convict me./I did it./I love you.” Wondering it it’s disloyal to enjoy another woman’s cooking. The deals made, like trying to be perfect. Couldn’t she be the good and grateful daughter? No. There are encounters with other mothers and daughters that include envy, desire, and a sense of danger. The rest of the poems are about the unnamed girl putting together pieces of old stories and her broken self, trying to make a complicated world whole. Perhaps this was the beginning of a poet. We’re kept snug within her point of view, not getting many answers, just as the girl didn’t, but tried to read expressions on the faces of adults. Then the safety breaks, and the narrator wakes to a changed world.
A girl tries on her mother’s shoes, echoes her hand-on-hips stance: and we know that soon she’ll have to figure out what a woman can be without a mother to guide her. They describe episodes that are ordinary, but they take away your breath because you know what’s coming. They ring as confidently as the voice of a young girl who is certain she is treasured. The first third or so of Mother Poems seem to emphasize rhythm more than the later ones, using it to lull us into the ease of love between a small girl and her mother. This collection of mother-daughter poems (Christy Ottaviano Books/Henry Holt) is the newest work from Hope Anita Smith, whose other books,The Way a Door Closes and Keeping the Night Watch, also tell family stories through poems.
0 kommentar(er)
