The House of Broken Things by Kim Moore
Corsair (Little, Brown Book Group)
She's sleeping like a fairy tale girl, before the story teaches girls like her a lesson. In The House of Broken Things, motherhood is a spell, a terrible power, an intelligence, and transformative in all its complexity and ambivalence. These poems move like myth, invoking the ghosts of The House of Broken Things, where 'Broken mothers and damaged fathers / slept the sleep of those who do not / have time to think, and fractured children / dreamt the things you might expect / that fractured children dream.' Moore's unflinching collection is an astonishing portrait of a mother. Her body as tender, contested territory. Her instincts fierce. Her mind alive with memories of her own childhood, marvelled by love for her young daughter, sharpened with foreboding for her safety in a broken world that has so often made to break her, too. There are truths our daughters must know, and there are burdens we must never pass on. To make them strong, must we also teach them to be afraid? Calling the spirits of Anne Sexton, Emily Brontë, Adrienne Rich and others, she conjures an intimate atmosphere of haunted domesticity, the poems questioning and incantatory as a lullaby whispered to a cradled baby. Throughout, fears, griefs and anxieties are paired with moments of great tenderness, wit and revelation: brokenness can feel like a trap, but these poems always offer a way out. The House of Broken Things is a thrilling new work from one of our boldest and most exciting poets.
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