Getting the Book: Buy it from your local independent bookstore or Broadway Books or Powells - or from the publisher, Chicory Blue Press. Libraries have it – if yours doesn’t, tell ‘em to get it. AND: a new edition of "She Said" is out - you can get it at Reading Frenzy in Portland or from the publisher, Radix Media.
- commentary
By the end of the 20th century, women’s motherhood decisions in the USA had become, terrifyingly, more severely constrained than they were in 1970, when I became a Jane. I had an eight month sabbatical from my faculty job in 1998, and surprised myself by writing a small set of poems about abortion and adoption. Soon I understood those poems needed to be joined by others, to become a book. So I researched contemporary clinical practice to bring my Jane-era knowledge up to date, increased my work with activists for reproductive justice, read about contemporary adoption methods and experiences, and learned about the intense insurgence of biotechnology in human conception and birth.
One of the first pieces I wrote when I returned to themes of motherhood and reproductive justice is “She Said” – published first in Calyx, then as a tiny chapbook, it’s a precursor to What if your mother, and appears as the book’s conclusion. In 2011, it was brought back into print as a pocket-size zine by Radix Media; it has a great new wrap-around version of the cover drawing and a new introduction too - it "operates on the emotional and political sides of the brain at once," James Tracy wrote in an online review - and that's just what I had in mind.
By the end of the 20th century, women’s motherhood decisions in the USA had become, terrifyingly, more severely constrained than they were in 1970, when I became a Jane. I had an eight month sabbatical from my faculty job in 1998, and surprised myself by writing a small set of poems about abortion and adoption. Soon I understood those poems needed to be joined by others, to become a book. So I researched contemporary clinical practice to bring my Jane-era knowledge up to date, increased my work with activists for reproductive justice, read about contemporary adoption methods and experiences, and learned about the intense insurgence of biotechnology in human conception and birth.
One of the first pieces I wrote when I returned to themes of motherhood and reproductive justice is “She Said” – published first in Calyx, then as a tiny chapbook, it’s a precursor to What if your mother, and appears as the book’s conclusion. In 2011, it was brought back into print as a pocket-size zine by Radix Media; it has a great new wrap-around version of the cover drawing and a new introduction too - it "operates on the emotional and political sides of the brain at once," James Tracy wrote in an online review - and that's just what I had in mind.
- excerpt
Not really a baby
Most of us think it’s not really a baby
not a baby at all when it’s that small.
We see pictures on a screen, strange
dim images shot back from space.
But we know science isn’t what you feel.
What you feel comes from inside
movement grandma calls quickening.
Until then we count on the calendar
to where we’d have to be to have it
be a baby: like if you let it grow
those chubby bumps into fingers
it would be because of the fingers
lots of us think it’s a baby then
with legs and arms, even if the eyes
look like they’re from another planet.
That’s when all the pictures fit inside
your family album; that’s when
most of us think it really is a baby.
Not really a baby
Most of us think it’s not really a baby
not a baby at all when it’s that small.
We see pictures on a screen, strange
dim images shot back from space.
But we know science isn’t what you feel.
What you feel comes from inside
movement grandma calls quickening.
Until then we count on the calendar
to where we’d have to be to have it
be a baby: like if you let it grow
those chubby bumps into fingers
it would be because of the fingers
lots of us think it’s a baby then
with legs and arms, even if the eyes
look like they’re from another planet.
That’s when all the pictures fit inside
your family album; that’s when
most of us think it really is a baby.
- responses
Arcana has written poems about a subject so complex and difficult that I could not imagine them being written …. she tackles the whole range of situations and emotions …. She’s articulated the impossible and … given us a way to think about what couldn’t have been thought. – Toi Derricotte
This inspired collection … covers the gamut of reproductive issues from mothering to miscarriages and women’s bodies to babies … delivered by a true poet.
– Conscience
This book … is about the reality of women’s lives, as daughters, lovers, mothers, and women who choose not to be mothers …. the beauty, the pain, the tragedy, the joy and the power ….
– Network for Reproductive Options Newsletter
Judith Arcana’s fierce, funny and bold poetry … is a page-turner that you can’t put down …. burns with the hidden language and stories of women.
– Minnie Bruce Pratt
Arcana's poems are maps of interior psychological and physiological journeys .... [they meet] the poetic challenge of naming the unnamed experience with bold lyricism, passion, and creative imagery. – Merle Hoffman in Affilia
Lyric, varied, funny, moving, full of lively stories and authentic voices …. this book will change the definition of political poetry. – Annie Finch
Judith Arcana's .... words speak the clear, bloody truth of women's fight for reproductive freedom .... taking readers ... on a journey through ... the unspoken and the unspeakable ... the real and the inevitable .... tell[ing] the real story about mothering, not the Hallmark version .... – Jill Scott in Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering (Canada)
The title poem … should be made into a poster and pinned up on the wall in every clinic in the United States. – Peter Bours, MD, longtime abortion provider
Arcana has written poems about a subject so complex and difficult that I could not imagine them being written …. she tackles the whole range of situations and emotions …. She’s articulated the impossible and … given us a way to think about what couldn’t have been thought. – Toi Derricotte
This inspired collection … covers the gamut of reproductive issues from mothering to miscarriages and women’s bodies to babies … delivered by a true poet.
– Conscience
This book … is about the reality of women’s lives, as daughters, lovers, mothers, and women who choose not to be mothers …. the beauty, the pain, the tragedy, the joy and the power ….
– Network for Reproductive Options Newsletter
Judith Arcana’s fierce, funny and bold poetry … is a page-turner that you can’t put down …. burns with the hidden language and stories of women.
– Minnie Bruce Pratt
Arcana's poems are maps of interior psychological and physiological journeys .... [they meet] the poetic challenge of naming the unnamed experience with bold lyricism, passion, and creative imagery. – Merle Hoffman in Affilia
Lyric, varied, funny, moving, full of lively stories and authentic voices …. this book will change the definition of political poetry. – Annie Finch
Judith Arcana's .... words speak the clear, bloody truth of women's fight for reproductive freedom .... taking readers ... on a journey through ... the unspoken and the unspeakable ... the real and the inevitable .... tell[ing] the real story about mothering, not the Hallmark version .... – Jill Scott in Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering (Canada)
The title poem … should be made into a poster and pinned up on the wall in every clinic in the United States. – Peter Bours, MD, longtime abortion provider