Customer Reviews

The Second Child: Poems

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I loved Deborah Garrison's first book of poems, heard them read on NPR one day as I drove over the long miles between Charlotte and Charlottesville. I still remember sitting in the car and scribbling her name, the book's name, on a receipt. I bought the book immediately and treasured them for their melancholy, their understated humor. When I saw she'd written a book of poems about motherhood, well, I *knew* I would love it.

I suppose I knew wrong. Maybe it's just me, that I have no perfect attitude towards my children, that my two boys are far from storybook quality. Think of them more as dramatic novel material, stunningly beautiful, full of tension, rife with passion, that runs the gamut from dark to silly. But Deborah's poetry about motherhood is treacle. Simple sugars that may taste good for a moment on the tongue but then clog your throat with their cloying sweetness.

You see, Deborah's poetry has lost its melancholy. Her pieces about strangers ("I saw you walking") have that quiet introspective quality that I missed so. But her treatment of her children, of motherhood, is all roses and bliss. I find myself angry for being brought to tears by "A Drink in the Night", which isn't poetry, but a nicely-worded treatment of a cute story about her daughter, one that should go in the album to repeat at her wedding, one day, but not as literature. There is no wrong in these poems, not in "A Human Calculation" (full of self-sacrifice and adoration), not in "Both Square and Round." I love that Deborah loves her children so. But good poetry it's not.

When she forgets that all she is about is wide-eyed motherly bliss, she's funny ("To the Man in the Loden Coat") or packs vast meaning into a single moment ("Pink and White"). Her poem about having a third child ("September Poem") is almost what I wish it would be. What she is arching for, I think, to be Sharon Olds.

Sharon Olds she's certainly not. I won't read her birth poem at blessing ways. Her breastfeeding sonnet (much though I appreciate a good homage to breastfeeding) is too light, too full of sugar, "you grow so you / can go from me, I know, yet I drink in / the sweet increase that will divide us."

I wanted so much more.

I have to strongly disagree with the previous reviewer. I found Ms. Garrison's poems to be uplifting, encouraging and as bright as the noonday sun.

I came away from the book with a smile on my face and feeling optimistic about the state of Motherhood in America today. Nobody has perfect kids, we all know that, and yet....we all want to believe our kids *are* the perfect ones. I know my two daughters are as perfect as perfect can be...as are their children. Don't be scared away from this book by one negative review. The poems are refreshing and upbeat and are about one woman's unique, real life. She doesn't claim to be Edna St. Vincent Millay...she just wrote luminous little poems about her own life experience as only she could do. I'm glad I heard Ms. Garrison on NPR and found her poetry.

This book spoke to me. Perhaps because I too am a mother who lives in New Jersey and commutes to NYC on a daily basis, but I think anyone who has moved on to the next stage of their life, will enjoy Ms. Garrison's wry observations of modern life and parenthood. The poems are both moving and funny and she writes in an accessible, conversational tone.

This book was a great treat. I am considering buying it for my other mommy-friends.

This is a book to read and keep. Wonderful words. I would really like to see more by this author.

I am not a person who reads poems. I just never thought it was a good way to pass the time. I picked this up at the library and I swear it just popped into my hands! The way she writes is how I think, but can't express myself. She puts into words what my heart thinks. I love how she talks about nursing her children, about life/death, about being overcome with worry for her children, etc. I read it three times last night and was reading it to my husband in bed. I will buy this book for myself. It is terrific and I will get her other books from the library.