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- Herausgeber: Seren
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
In Imagined Sons Carrie Etter has written a book of vivid, heartbreaking poems on the experience of giving up a child for adoption. A prize-winning author, lecturer, critic and popular blogger, Etter imagines the possible destinies for the child and presents us with various scenarios from the tragic to the absurd. That the child's birthday is also Sept. 11th adds a layer of irony and pathos, 'What is the anniversary of loss?' - asks the narrator in one of the 'Birthmother's Catechism' poems. "In Imagined Sons Carrie Etter reflects on the experience of a birthmother who gave up her son when she was seventeen. In a series of haunting, psalmlike prose poems of enormous courage and insight, she describes possible encounters with this son, now in his late teens, expressing how 'sometimes the melancholy arrives before the remembering'. The series of 'Birthmother's Catechisms' return to repeated, harrowing questions that yield different answers at different moments. This quite extraordinary book by a writer of great imagistic power and skill leaves a mark on the reader which is ineradicable. These are poems of the utmost importance." - Bernard O'Donoghue "Carrie Etter's stellar new volume folds the wrenching passion of displaced motherhood into a fascinating sequence of poems. Etter writes with intelligence, imagination and style - and not a shred of sentiment. Neither a memoir nor a narrative, the book opens lyric windows to interior experiences, and it rings with psychological truths. This gifted poet defines poetry as she wrestles with ambiguity." - Molly Peacock
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Imagined Sons
Carrie Etter
Seren is the book imprint of
Poetry Wales Press Ltd.
57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE
www.serenbooks.com
facebook.com/SerenBooks
Twitter:@SerenBooks
The right of Carrie Etter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
© Carrie Etter 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78172-151-3
ISBN: e-book: 978-1-78172-154-4
Mobi/Kindle ISBN: 978-1-78172-155-1
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.
The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.
Cover Image: ‘St. Christina’ by Paula Rego, 2009. By kind permission of the artist.
Printed in Bembo by Bell & Bain Ltd. Glasgow.
Author’s Website: http://carrieetter.blogspot.co.uk/
Contents
A Birthmother’s Catechism
Imagined Sons 1: Fairy Tale
Imagined Sons 2: Delivery
Imagined Sons 3: Seed Corn
Imagined Sons 4: Black and Velvet
Imagined Sons 5: Reunion
A Birthmother’s Catechism (September 11, 1986)
Imagined Sons 6: Introducing Myself as His (The First Supermarket Dream)
Imagined Sons 7: The Big Issue
Imagined Sons 8: The Businessman
Imagined Sons 9: Greek Salad
A Birthmother’s Catechism
Imagined Sons 10: Mexico
Imagined Sons 11: The Friend (Part 1)
Imagined Sons 12: The Birthmother, The Adoptive Mother & Their Surfer Boy
Imagined Sons 13: The Woodcutter
A Birthmother’s Catechism
Imagined Sons 14: Five Star
Imagined Sons 15: The Second Supermarket Dream
Imagined Sons 16: Narcissus
Imagined Sons 17: The Courthouse
A Birthmother’s Catechism
Imagined Sons 18: Used Cars
Imagined Sons 19: The Baker
Imagined Sons 20: The Friend (Part 2)
Imagined Sons 21: The Friend (Part 3)
A Birthmother’s Catechism
Imagined Sons 22: Prague
Imagined Sons 23: Blood
Imagined Sons 24: The Lone Star State
Imagined Sons 25: The Train Home
A Birthmother’s Catechism
Imagined Sons 26: The Third Supermarket Dream
Imagined Sons 27: The Fourth Supermarket Dream
Imagined Sons 28: The Pilot
Imagined Sons 29: The Friend (Part 4)
A Birthmother’s Catechism
Imagined Sons 30: Drury Lane, London
Imagined Sons 31: Folk Night at The George
Imagined Sons 32: The Fifth Supermarket Dream
Imagined Sons 33: Franklin Park
A Birthmother’s Catechism (September 11, 2006)
Imagined Sons 34: Lemonade
Imagined Sons 35: Enoteca de Belem, Lisbon
Imagined Sons 36: The Bus
Imagined Sons 37: Night Patrols
Imagined Sons 38: DJ
A Birthmother’s Catechism
Acknowledgments
About the Author
‘Do not forget your moon is my moon & that each morning I remember
You by the distance I have put between us.’
– Sophie Cabot Black, ‘The Arguments’
‘It seems courage is lack of alternatives.’
– Deborah Digges, ‘The New World’
A Birthmother’s Catechism
How did you let him go?
With black ink and legalese
How did you let him go?
It’d be another year before I could vote
How did you let him go?
With altruism, tears and self-loathing
How did you let him go?
A nurse brought pills for drying up breast milk
How did you let him go?
Who hangs a birdhouse from a sapling?
Imagined Sons 1: Fairy Tale
My son leans from the tower; his red pompadour, stiff with Aqua Net, resists the quick wind. When he sings, the notes hasten to the forest a mile south before they descend. I clamber onto my restless horse; she starts before I am secure. Almost too soon we reach the wood.
The notes are red. I pluck them like poppies.
Imagined Sons 2: Delivery
Pushing a trolley stacked with grocery crates, a delivery man follows me on the circuitous route to my flat. ‘I’m surprised you found it so easily,’ I say, ‘your first time.’
‘I’ve been here before,’ he replies.
‘So you know Bradford on Avon?’ I say, walking slowly up the slope.
‘No,’ he says, out of breath, as though the incline’s steeper, as though he’s Sisyphus, ‘I know you.’
