Customer Reviews

Essential Love : Poems About Mothers and Fathers, Daughters and Sons

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In ESSENTIAL LOVE, Ginny Lowe Connors has succeeded in organizing an outstanding collection of rich and diverse poems about the relationships between parents and children. The poems are written in accessible language, easily understood, yet rich, bold and poignant. Poems are included by award-winning authors, as well as lesser known poets. The diverse works express the many facets of parenthood and childhood, from joys, mystery and wonder, to hardships, pain and unending worries. The book is a celebration of these relationships in all their complexity. Connors also manages to incorporate a nice balance of poems which preserve the simplicity and awe intrinsic to the parent/child bond. This thoughtfully constructed and creative book would make a great gift for grandparents, parents, children, friends, sisters, teachers.... Curling up with this book is like taking a journey to the soul, a worthy and satisfying excursion.

Essential Love: Poems About Mothers And Fathers, Daughters And Sons showcases some 150 contemporary American poets as they explore diverse facets of the relationship between parents and children. The poetry reflects joy and grief, milestones and mysteries, the bonds of blood and kinship, and celebrates familial love that endures a lifetime. The reader will readily recognize themselves and their own loved ones in this compendium of memorable poetry. Mothers And Daughters: There is a cord between us/not yet cut/On it we move/like tightrope walkers/novices/uncertain of the net/Take tentative steps/across the gulf/toward one another/Careful/not wishing to turn back/Hopeful/that keeping balance/we can meet/can then embrace/and pass each other/as we must. Maude Meehan.

I bought this book to read poems about parents love for their children and sacrifices of parents for their children; instead I found a collection of limericks with no taste. The title of the book is highly misleading. Do we really need to have poetry about; giving mother a bath (Bathing Mother by Mary Ann Wehler); or to My Father, Dying in a Supermarket by Wesley McNair? Poems such as; What My Mother Believed by Laura Stearns; and Admiring My Father by Thomas Smith stand out as exceptions. They offer some sparkle to an otherwise tame book. The reader is not deprived of anything if he/she chooses not to own this book.