Customer Reviews

Nesting Doll

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When I was eighteen, I volunteered at a battered women's shelter, aptly named A Woman's Place. I worked in a poetry group comprised of the shelter's residents, staff members and other volunteers, headed by Rita Brady Kiefer, professor of women's studies and creative writing at the University of Northern Colorado. We met every Sunday for six weeks, workshopping each other's writing in preparation for a series of four readings to be given at the six weeks' finish. Under Kiefer's motherly tutelage, we crafted gorgeous poetry and presented probably the most heartrending four literary shows ever seen by the small cow-town of Greeley, Colorado. The residents, these women hiding from abusive men, rebuilding their lives, rediscovering themselves, wrote with raw, agonizing emotion which Kiefer harnessed, helping them produce masterpieces.

Kiefer, a former nun whose departure from the church is documented in Nesting Doll's first poem "Ex-Nun in a Red Mercedes," seems predestined for a life of compassion and altruism. Yet, in her selflessness, she is independent, fierce, poised, and determined to help those who don't possess these qualities, discover them. Nesting Doll is a search of courage and justice for the voiceless, oppressed minions-and Kiefer herself.

The writing is lyrical, and the language and subject matter are always powerful. In "Last Song," the torture of a woman shocks the reader: "Just before they cut out her tongue/she cried I will learn to sign, her/fingers lacing the air he commanded/those hands silent they brought cleavers" (Kiefer, 6) Kiefer's outrage is evident, invoking the reader's own outrage and sympathy. We wonder at the woman's bravery and the torturer's madness, his command to silence the hands after she promises to learn sign language. The poem is chilling and provocative.

Kiefer is also capable of sensuality. Inspired by Rumi's passionate ghazaals, Kiefer penned "Like This": "Not the way father kissed mother/on the cheek, not in the front of the house,/no, in the bedroom, basement, in/those dark places, those under the earth/places no one can see, kiss me/across mountains when we are apart . . ." (Kiefer, 14) A shame we don't see many romantic poems in Nesting Doll, for the beauty of "Like This" positions Kiefer in league with icons like Rumi or even Pablo Neruda.