She Holds a Cosmos

Poems on Motherhood

Karolin Schnoor

• Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781797209890
• eBook ISBN:
  9781797211497
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

A petite, beautifully packaged collection of poems about motherhood, this is the perfect gift for mothers of all ages.

This beautifully illustrated, empowering collection features more than 25 poignant poems about the incredible experience of being a mother. Filled with inspiring and moving poetry exploring motherhood in all its dimensions—from pregnancy and birth to the countless joys, struggles, and hilarious moments that come with raising children—this book is a perfect gift for mothers at every stage, whether they're expecting or empty nesting. Presented in a petite, eye-catching package with contemporary illustrations throughout, this is a lovely, arresting tribute to the life-altering journey of motherhood.

• POETRY TREND: Featuring young, contemporary voices beside beloved, time-tested poets, this pretty, slim volume will appeal to poetry lovers and mothers of all ages.
• CELEBRATES DIVERSE VOICES: The range of poets included in this collection is wide and diverse. With poems by up-and-comers, classic poets, women, and men, of all ages and ethnicities, this book captures a broad, representative spectrum of the experience of motherhood.

Consumer:

• Mothers of all ages
• Poetry lovers

Parturition

Mina Loy

I am the centre

Of a circle of pain

Exceeding its boundaries in every direction

The business of the bland sun

Has no affair with me

In my congested cosmos of agony

From which there is no escape

On infinitely prolonged nerve-vibrations

Or in contraction

To the pin-point nucleus of being

Locate an irritation without

It is within

Within

It is without

The sensitized area

Is identical with the extensity

Of intension

I am the false quantity

In the harmony of physiological potentiality

To which

Gaining self-control

I should be consonant

In time

Pain is no stronger than the resisting force

Pain calls up in me

The struggle is equal

The open window is full of a voice

A fashionable portrait-painter

Running up-stairs to a woman’s apartment

Sings

“All the girls are tid’ly did’ly

All the girls are nice

Whether they wear their hair in curls

Or—”

At the back of the thoughts to which I permit crystallization

The conception Brute

Why?

The irresponsibility of the male

Leaves woman her superior Inferiority.

He is running up-stairs

I am climbing a distorted mountain of agony

Incidentally with the exhaustion of control

I reach the summit

And gradually subside into anticipation of

Repose

Which never comes

For another mountain is growing up

Which goaded by the unavoidable

I must traverse

Traversing myself

Something in the delirium of night-hours

Confuses while intensifying sensibility

Blurring spatial contours

So aiding elusion of the circumscribed

That the gurgling of a crucified wild beast

Comes from so far away

And the foam on the stretched muscles of a mouth

Is no part of myself

There is a climax in sensibility

When pain surpassing itself

Becomes Exotic

And the ego succeeds in unifying the positive and negative poles of sensation

Uniting the op...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword: Mothering
• Letter in July
• In Knowledge of Young Boys
• The Art of Creation
• Parturition
• The Black Maria: VIII (Excerpt)
• We Cannot Sleep Alone
• Outside the New Body
• The Poet Contemplates the Nature of Motherhood
• Self Portrait in the Backyard as Mother
• [Sleep, darling]
• Motherload
• In the Horniman Museum
• Prayer
• A Fable
• Waterwings
• I Want the World
• She, As Painter
• The Daughter
• Hours Days Years Unmoor Their Orbits
• Mother’s Day
• The Real Reason
• The courage that my mother had
• my mama moved among the days
• Foreign Body
• Legacies
• Nature, the gentlest mother
• Credits
• Chronicle Ebooks