What Kind of Woman
Poems
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller
A Goop Book Club Pick
"If you want your breath to catch and your heart to stop, turn to Kate Baer."--Joanna Goddard, Cup of Jo
A stunning and honest debut poetry collection about the beauty and hardships of being a woman in the world today, and the many roles we play - mother, partner, and friend.
“When life throws you a bag of sorrow, hold out your hands/Little by little, mountains are climbed.” So ends Kate Baer’s remarkable poem “Things My Girlfriends Teach Me.” In “Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels” she challenges her reader to consider their grandmother’s cake, the taste of the sea, the cool swill of freedom. In her poem “Deliverance” about her son’s birth she writes “What is the word for when the light leaves the body?/What is the word for when it/at last, returns?”
Through poems that are as unforgettably beautiful as they are accessible, Kate Bear proves herself to truly be an exemplary voice in modern poetry. Her words make women feel seen in their own bodies, in their own marriages, and in their own lives. Her poems are those you share with your mother, your daughter, your sister, and your friends.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Baer debuts with a meditative exploration of her identity as a woman, wife, and mother, disrupting mainstream assumptions about femininity. Broken into three sections, the poems center on the roles of lover, wife, and mother, yet as she notes, "You do not have to choose one or the other." For Baer, being a woman is itself a kind of powerful, dangerous magic: "I can be beautiful/ if I want to. I can take your/ rabbit ears and disappear/ them with my tongue." In "Female Candidate," she creates a linguistic collage of key phrases used repeatedly to describe women in positions of power: "I like her but/ aggressive tone/ it's not that she/ now that I have daughters/ if only she would." In "For the Advice Cards at Bridal Showers," she turns worn-out pieces of advice upside down: "Go to bed angry. Wake up with a plan. When/ someone asks for the secret to a happy marriage,/ remember you don't know." Baer's poems unearth the difficulties of marriage, as well as the body after it has given birth ("a deflated balloon. Bruised fruit"). In these confident and fearless poems, Baer suggests that the deepest and most vulnerable love is found in life's imperfections.
