We Live in Bodies

by Ellen Watson

"You will close this book exhilarated by its quirky, passionate poems and grateful for its huge heart fired and fed by a prodigious imagination. This is brilliant, urgent work."—Thomas Lux

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1997

About the author

Ellen Doré Watson is an American poet, translator and teacher.

Reviews

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highlights were "12 May 1996" (which burst with tenderness), and "You Know Who You Are" (which spoke profoundly to both the better and worse parts of my perceived inner self), but the whole first section of Watson's book was excellent.
I think her work is best when she uses only enough abstract silliness to give levity to the complex issues she complicates in her poems; Plath's "You're" comes to mind, full of sonic surprises. However, the later poems seemed to swirl off into an interior conversation that I only felt half privy to. I wanted a little more lucidity from the latter half of the book.
There is a precision and a cleverness to the metaphors in Watson's writing; I find (as I think I've noted before) the best poems are the ones which are both familiar and surprising—the following quote does both in spades:
"A year is a sausage held in by its own casing, linked / to those ahead and behind by a thin twist.../ Why shouldn't years blurt by / in uneven, homemade shapes?"
--"Hungry for Them"
And if that's not enough of a reason to read the book, go find "12 May 1996". And then go read the book.

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice little poetry book about love, womanhood, motherhood, and growing up in (what I interpretted to be) the American south. The language was pretty simple and easy to follow, with some really striking lines. Some of the ideas felt a bit repetitive/boring but the poems that stood out to me were:
-Wafer
-It Will Take How Long
-What Gets Left Out of History Books
-The Edge of the Wild
-Where the Dead Live
-World Greater Than We Make