To Bend and Braid
Paperback
ISBN13: 9781639803743
Publisher: Kelsay Books
Published: Aug 1 2023
Pages: 38
Weight: 0.14
Height: 0.08 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Heather Lanier, author of Raising a Rare Girl
In these tender and carefully crafted poems, Patterson paints an individual experience of early motherhood while embracing that which connects us and makes us all human-coming from another's body: its familiar / weight . . . the kind we both knew from our / mothers' bodies, our earliest nights. To Bend and Braid teaches us to welcome small and grand wonders; from the ancient oak to the miniscule moth, Patterson shows us how motherhood transforms the world around us exactly and not at all as we began.
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach, author of 40 WEEKS
To Bend and Braid is an unabashed catalog of love and discovery: a child discovers the world, and a mother discovers a new way of seeing. In delicate, observational lyrics, Emily Patterson upends the idea of parent as teacher and guide. Instead, as mother and daughter travel through field and forest and dinner table, the mother recognizes how she is being transformed: You are no slate, blank or otherwise- / it's the world and me, awaiting your color. Patterson reminds us of everyday miracles; her book invites us to encounter the world anew.
Emily Pérez, author of What Flies Want, winner of the Iowa Prize
Patterson weaves a collection of lyrical prose in her chapbook, To Bend and Braid, which explores motherhood's conflict of holding on and letting go. Many of her poems focus on themes of motherhood and its everyday quality, the witnessing of the unfolding of a childhood, and the awe and simultaneous helplessness knowing children will forge their own roads. To Bend and Braid tries to make sense of the uncertain terrain and the poems serve as a refuge to soothe the prickly texture of what it means to reckon with motherhood.
Rudri Bhatt Patel
Also from
Patterson, Emily
Also in
General Poetry
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Pitavy, Francois
Alighieri, Dante
Paperback
Sounding the Seasons Enlarged Edition: One Hundred and Ten Sonnets for the Christian Year
Guite, Malcolm
Paperback
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Lao Tzu
Paperback
They Bloom Because of You: Poems on the Infinite Love, Growth, and Magic of Motherhood
Urlichs, Jessica
Paperback
Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback
This Is the Main Event: Discovering the Life You Long for in the Life You Have
Smith, Joshua Luke
Hardcover
