The Literary Mama Blog Book Tour
February 6th, 2006 Caroline
I still remember when my sister first contacted me about a writing group – with childcare! — that was starting up in Berkeley. I was a new mom in San Francisco, journaling like crazy, trying to make sense of my changed life, but I couldn’t get it together, too overwhelmed by my colicky boy, to join the group. Months later, the group was becoming a website and some time after that, I was invited aboard as an editor. It’s hard to believe that colicky boy is now a robust preschooler and Literary Mama is now a thriving website with a gorgeous anthology.
But, despite my opening, I don’t have maternal feelings toward the book. Others were much more directly involved in the birthing of this collection. And although editors are often referred to as midwives, I don’t have that relationship to the book, either. Rather, I feel toward the book the way I do when I run into a mom friend, familiar from the playground, all dressed up for a cocktail party. I almost don’t recognize her in her finery – she’s so familiar, yet I can’t place her at first — but I’m delighted when I do: Wow! You look great!
So after pausing to admire the gorgeous cover, to appreciate the comfortable weight of the book, I dove right in to see how the essays I know best, the ones that ran in Literary Reflections, look in their new home. Joanne Hartman’s lovely, quietly funny Evolution of a Muse speaks to me even more directly now that my first muse has started to talk back, and my second reminds me to capture these fleeting baby moments before they evaporate.
Lizbeth Finn-Arnold’s encounter with Henry Thoreau in Out of the Woods (an essay which is inspiring some thoughtful discussion over at Midlife Mama and at ReadingWritingLiving) starts bitterly: Thoreau may advise “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity,” “But Thoreau wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes in his tiny cabin with my two tots.” But a visit to Walden Pond with those rambunctious kids helps Lizbeth figure out how to create the solitude she needs to write in the midst of her chaotic life.
Finally, poet Nicole Cooley’s essay starts “A confession: I was one of those people I shake my head at now, a woman who thought having a baby would not change my life.” She goes on to detail just how completely, how importantly, her baby changes her life and her poetry.
The revelation to me, with my essay-writer’s bias, is the poetry in the book, which I confess to rarely reading on the site. Lori Romero’s shape poem, Pregnancy, opens the anthology with a wonderfully fresh take on what can be, in less assured hands, something of a gimmick. Her recitation of the distractions and discomforts of pregnancy almost made me miss it. In Meegan Mulholland’s extraordinary Miscarriage of an English Teacher, the speaker’s careful, continually correcting grammar tries to keep a tight rein on the emotions of dashed expectations. Rachel Iverson’s gorgeous Namaste brings tears to my eyes with its simple, lovely wishes for her child: “a lemonade / stand white sand, green corn / tamales, sidewalks and marine / layer mornings/ newsprint on your fingers, / bubble baths, earthworms in / black dirt, satellite t.v. and / at least one big win…” And Linda Lee Crossfeld’s moving Packing the Car makes me grateful that my son is still just packing a lunchbox.
But the writing in this anthology is not all poignant moments and wistful reflections. These writers are funny. The fabulous Jennifer Eyre White’s Analyzing Ben flat-out cracks me up. In Lisa Rubisch’s How to Make a Meat Pie and other Tales of the Ambitious Mother, cooking for her toothless child inspires one of my favorite sentences of all time: “Feel terrific about this milk shake of meaty love you’ve created for your son.” These writers are sexy, whether they’re flinging chocolate at their daughters to teach a lesson about love, or stealing away for a charged moment with another kid’s dad. These writers are smart, compelling, and tough.
I could go on. I shouldn’t go on. Stop reading this blog and start reading the book.
Entry Filed under: Reviews