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Hosiery Seams on a Bowlegged Woman: Poems
39 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
10 people want to read
About the author
Thylias Moss
29 books27 followersThylias Moss is a multiracial maker, an award-winning poet, recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" grant, and twice nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 17, 2025
It is difficult to immediately call up an adequate or proper response to Thylias Moss’ debut publication. Moss cycles through a variety of voicings and employs an often experimental and esoteric form. One reaction to Hosiery that feels relevant to mention was that I could not hold beak tears on page 34 after reading “TALUCA, TWENTY YEARS LATER”. Her poems, while creative, are also moving.
You can see early (indeed the first) representations of Moss injecting her Limited Fork Theory into her form throughout Hosiery. We observe her playing with the space between words and phrases- a technique that would become her marque du fabrique as well as her vocation.
Moss recovers images of loss, love, uneasiness, race and interraciality, class, sex, gender, domestic violence, rape, parenthood, childhood, relationships, and so on- all these voices, tactics, and concepts in what totals out to a very short work, respectively; a collection of heavy poems that, despite these faculties, does not feel over complicated. Make no mistake: they are thoughtful, complex, and deeply engaging.
There is a sense in which her work, contrarily, does indeed appear or feel complicated – it is not, but it has that veneer due to her experimental strategy and creative vision. I would catch myself rereading some of her pieces, trying to contextualize them the best I can, while already ruminating with the very sensation that knowledge would release as I search precariously for it. After exploring her voices and getting a feel for the themes, one begins to register the details more clearly.
Appraising not the complexity of her work but the response her messaging invokes, it holds beyond a doubt that Moss has a innovative, lovely, and seamless use of language and imagery.
I would catch myself hung on phrases like “some poached country”, “final pink breath”, “there’s something eternal at work”, and of course “hosiery seams on a bowlegged woman”.
This is a wonderful and refreshing piece of literature and I wish there were more readers and writers speaking about it and sharing their thoughts and feelings. While Moss has since been decorated with various accolades, there still is an untappable mystique about her that may be more due to inaccessibility than intentional restraint. Nevertheless, (and it might as well be for these reason that) Hosiery (and, really, Moss’ ouvere) is a rare gem mine worth exploring.
You can see early (indeed the first) representations of Moss injecting her Limited Fork Theory into her form throughout Hosiery. We observe her playing with the space between words and phrases- a technique that would become her marque du fabrique as well as her vocation.
Moss recovers images of loss, love, uneasiness, race and interraciality, class, sex, gender, domestic violence, rape, parenthood, childhood, relationships, and so on- all these voices, tactics, and concepts in what totals out to a very short work, respectively; a collection of heavy poems that, despite these faculties, does not feel over complicated. Make no mistake: they are thoughtful, complex, and deeply engaging.
There is a sense in which her work, contrarily, does indeed appear or feel complicated – it is not, but it has that veneer due to her experimental strategy and creative vision. I would catch myself rereading some of her pieces, trying to contextualize them the best I can, while already ruminating with the very sensation that knowledge would release as I search precariously for it. After exploring her voices and getting a feel for the themes, one begins to register the details more clearly.
Appraising not the complexity of her work but the response her messaging invokes, it holds beyond a doubt that Moss has a innovative, lovely, and seamless use of language and imagery.
I would catch myself hung on phrases like “some poached country”, “final pink breath”, “there’s something eternal at work”, and of course “hosiery seams on a bowlegged woman”.
This is a wonderful and refreshing piece of literature and I wish there were more readers and writers speaking about it and sharing their thoughts and feelings. While Moss has since been decorated with various accolades, there still is an untappable mystique about her that may be more due to inaccessibility than intentional restraint. Nevertheless, (and it might as well be for these reason that) Hosiery (and, really, Moss’ ouvere) is a rare gem mine worth exploring.
Displaying 1 of 1 review