Emily Patterson writes of the realities and blessings of motherhood
In her 2022 collection, So Much Tending Remains, poet Emily Patterson reflected on the first two years of her daughter’s life. In her new collection, The Birth of Undoing, she’s written something of a prequel, what came before those first two years.
Sitting in the waiting room at the fertility clinic, surprised “you knew the rules before you ever walked in” (don’t look at women leaving; keep accidental eye contact brief; don’t bring a toddler with you). The ultrasounds. Imagining what the child looks like at eleven weeks. The physical discomfort (Patterson draws a “self-portrait as not the giantess”), the beginnings of labor. Then she considers those first hours after birth.
In a room with white walls,
white floor speckled like an egg,
white sheets: you are hours old
and wrapped in a white blanket,
waking every hour to eat.
The door to our room, weighted
and thick, separates us from the rest
of the ward. Our only visitors:
nurses, midwives, and the kind
social worker, here to tell me
the signs of more than baby blues.
I nod, but my eyes stray to you.
I am all jubilance, distracted
by sleepless joy. Later, as the days
and nights blur, I’ll remember
her words––warm as the first sip
of tea, tasting of a courage
both bitter and honeyed.
Patterson’s reflections continue after the birth through the first early months. She describes childcare, attending a baby shower, dealing with postpartum depression, a visit to the playground, and taking a hike with her husband and watching the baby in the carrier on his back.
Emily Patterson
Then the prequel changes into something of a sequel, picking up where So Much Tending Remains leaves off. The family emerges from the pandemic lockdown. They go to the beach, experiencing the ocean. They explore a bog with its marsh marigolds. She remembers her grandmother and what she learned. She watches her daughter dance and watches Sesame Street with her. She sees her daughter developing her own personality. She comforts her child who has a nightmare while she’s still sleeping. Her daughter begins pre-school.
It all sounds very ordinary, very “much to be expected.” And yet, Patterson brings a tenderness and a discerning eye to the ordinary, and we begin to realize just how extraordinary all of this is.
Patterson has published three previous collections, So Much Tending Remains (2022), To Bend and to Braid (2023), and Haiku at 5:38 A.M. (2024). Her work has been published by numerous literary journals and magazines, including Rust & Moth, Whale Road Review, North American Review, CALYX, and many others. She received a B.A. in English from Ohio Wesleyan University and an M.A. in Education from Ohio State University. She lives in Columbus, Ohio.
The Birth of Undoing takes what seems commonplace and explains that it’s anything but that. That’s not an easy thing to accomplish. Yet Patterson does exactly that in poem after poem. You realize that we’re all very much alike, and we are very much unique.
Related
Emily Paterson and So Much Tending Remains
Emily Patterson and Haiku at 5:38 A.M.
Thin Starlight: Interview with Emily Jean Patterson
Photo by naitokz, 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
- Poets and Poems: Seth Wieck and “Call Out Coyote” - March 12, 2026
- Poets and Poems: Susan Rooke and “A Room Full of Ghosts” - March 10, 2026
- Poets and Poems: Dave Brown and “I Don’t Usually But” - March 5, 2026
Leave a Reply