Erin Murphy writes a part-memoir, party-poetry account of growing up.
When we were children, my brothers and I would sometimes be handed a snack that I thought had been invented by my mother. “Bread, butter, and sugar” was possibly our favorite treat. My mother was tickled that we saw it as a special dessert. It was only years later, when I visited her in a rehab center while she recovered from a broken hip bone, that she told me where it had come from.
She grew up in the Great Depression. Money was so tight that my aunt quit high school because she couldn’t pay the 25 cents for gym clothes. My mother, the fourth of six children, knew hunger. She said there were times when there was nothing to eat, so they’d go to bed hungry. The next day, my grandmother would prepare sandwiches for school, using the only ingredients she had – butter and sugar sandwiches. It was a poor child’s lunch in the 1930s, and her own children thought of it as a terrific treat.
Reading poet Erin Murphy’s new work, Mother as Conjunction, imagine my surprise to discover someone else who had the same experience as my mother, except it happened decades later. Mother as Conjunction is part-memoir and part-journal, with a heavy overlay of poetic sensibility. It’s not poetry per se; instead, it occupies a space between prose poetry and memoir. Some of the 19 accounts seem almost like diary entries. They cover growing up, her early adult life, and her life with her own family.
One account drew me in instantly with its title, “How to Make a Sugar Sandwich.” Yes, it is the same concoction my mother described, ate herself, and fed to us as a treat. Murphy’s experience approximates my mother’s as a child – it’s what you had when there was nothing else available. She frames it by describing a school friend who lived a very different life, as in, she drove her own Mercedes Benz convertible when she was 16. It’s doubtful that the friend had ever experienced a sugar sandwich. Murphy ends the account with the official recipe.
From “How to Make a Sugar Sandwich”
To make a sugar sandwich, you’ll need two pieces of white bread (not
wheat or whole grain); margarine (not butter); and white granulated
sugar. [Warning: be sure the margarine tub—which makes for a good
Tupperware substitute—is, indeed, filled with hydrogenated oil and not
mashed potatoes left over from last night’s dinner.] Slather the bread with
margarine, then sprinkle a layer of sugar on top. Take the sandwich
outside and perch on the front step while your younger brother rumbles
28
up and down the sidewalk on his Big Wheel. Soon your mother will call
from her night bartending job to make sure you’ve put the laundry in the
dryer. “Thanks, sweetie. Love you,” she’ll say, as always, before hanging
up. Now take a bite of your sandwich. Your fingertips glisten with the
sugar’s silver glitter. And it tastes rich, but not too rich. Just rich enough.
Murphy writes about a poignant story from childhood, and the cruelty of children. An overheard sales pitch and the memory of her mother it evokes. A story from her infancy about her parents in Florence. Her mother overcoming a park ranger’s rules. Her mother struggling to provide for her and her brother. The cocktail waitress who bought her book. And more.
Erin Murphy
The memories and stories seem fragmented, until you consider them as a unit. And it’s there that the real picture of her mother emerges.
Murphy is a professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, Altoona College. She may also be one of the most prolific writers and poets working in academia. She’s written or edited some 15 books, five in the last three years alone, with another poetry collection and an anthology of essays in the publishing pipeline. Her first poetry collection, Science of Desire, was published in 2004; her most recent poetry collection, Human Resources, was published in 2025. She also serves as editor of The Summerset Review.
Mother as Conjunction is a moving, innovative way to remember and memorialize. The stories and the way they’re presented pull you into understanding and even appreciation.
Personal confession: I still occasionally treat myself to a sugar sandwich. And every time reminds me of my mother.
Related:
Four Collections by Erin Murphy, Part 1.
Four Collections by Erin Murphy, Part 2.
Photo by PetteriO, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Glynn Young.
How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem)—to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Anthology included.
“I require all our incoming poetry students—in the MFA I direct—to buy and read this book.”
—Jeanetta Calhoun Mish
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