The Everyday, the Mundane, and the Brave

by Sarah Joy Thompson

Thompson’s beautifully honest poems invite readers into the demanding, transformative work of being an adult self. By equal measures intimate and imaginative, these poems show that work to be as outward as it is inward, always bound up with ongoing efforts to know others: strangers as well as family, within the shared space of a city, a home, even a body, but also across distances of geography, time, and dream. Where human connection seems threatened, voice is what rescues it, and this heartening collection, in what it says and what it does, confirms the necessity of song.



—Susannah Hollister, editor of Gertrude Stein’s Stanzas in Meditation





Intertwined throughout this collection of poems is an overwhelming theme of love. Love of family, spouse, and above all her infant son. This love radiates to all children and mothers and the empathy she feels for the difficulties of raising a child in today’s world is tenderly portrayed in simple, direct words. Nor does she neglect the mundane aspects of young motherhood, the discomfort and often inconvenience of providing sustenance from her own body to that of her child. She approaches this phase of life with open eyes that see the everyday beauty of it and its challenges.



—Charles Darnell, author of Water, Tongues, Earth, and Blood

46 pages, Paperback

First published September 25, 2019

Reviews

[Anna Winter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written, very thoughtful and unique. Definitely recommend as a read for yourself or as a gift.