Birth of a Daughter

Book excerpt: New and sensitive ... raw, in-the-moment mothering feelings. -Sarah Cannon, author of The Shame of Losing In Birth of a Daughter, Samantha Kolber deftly reveals the private world of pregnancy and birth-the middle of the night and light of day worries about safety, connection, and intimacy, weighing what shifts, writing, "I am marked. I am one becoming two, becoming one / again...my body deceives me." Indeed, these poems are brave in their accounting of the pregnant, birthing body, the realities of mothering, and the territory we enter-"oh, these worlds we are now / you and I." Dailiness and milestones merge here, bringing us on a journey that is part emotional travelogue, part wonder, part weighing of generations and of our times, and part arrival at the precise awareness that, "I am witness. I am mother." Kolber's voice is an important one, honoring what is often kept hidden. - Kerrin McCadden, author of Keep This to Yourself In her startling, beautiful new collection, Birth of a Daughter, Samantha Kolber pulls us into the time-out-of-time experience of pregnancy and motherhood. Alert to the expanded "porous" boundaries of both body and self, Kolber writes with intimate, visceral authority: "I am / clearly awake." Like salt-water pearls, these raw, gorgeous poems glow, capturing the wild internal variations felt just holding a new child or toddler in your arms, exhausted and exhilarated. "I am me plus and minus the cells expunged to create you, daughter," Kolber writes, ever-attuned to the possibility of artistic sublimation to the hunger of her infant daughter. This collection affirms Kolber's territorial claim to the mother-as-artist: "sucking what light I make / into the core of you / oh, these worlds we are now." - Megan Buchanan, author of Clothesline Religion