What do you think?
Rate this book
Increase
Increase is Lia Purpura’s chronicle of her pregnancy, the birth of her son, Joseph, and the first year of his life. She recounts her journey with the heightened awareness of a mother-to-be and through the eyes of a poet, from the moment she confirms her pregnancy as “A blue X slowly crosses itself, first one arm, then the other in the small white window of the test,” through “the X of his crossed feet in sleep” as her child’s world begins. Purpura’s sensibility transcends the facts of personal experience to enfold the dramatically changing shape of a larger, complex world.These closely knit essays portray the rhythms of a new mother’s life as it is challenged and transformed in nearly every aspect, from the emotions of wildness, loss, need, and desire to the outward progress--and interruption--of her work and activities. Increase offers us motherhood at an extraordinary pitch, recording, absorbing, and revisiting experiences from a multitude of angles. Purpura presents her story of discovery with unequaled eloquence, grace, and power.
- GenresNonfictionEssays
152 pages, Hardcover
First published July 31, 2000
5 people are currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
Lia Purpura
22 books56 followersLia Purpura (born February 22, 1964, Mineola, New York) is an American poet, writer and educator.
(from Wikipedia)
(from Wikipedia)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 25, 2012
Lia Purpura could write about dental tape and I'd be interested in it—for her angle of perspective, the texture of her syntax, the way the mouth becomes “any mouth” in the holy repetition of that code of human language: “the shout comes, the chant, tune and refrain: these words are the world.” And what a world, another and yet the same. Had I read a book like hers when I was nineteen, would it have seemed more possible for a woman to be a writer and a mother? A professional with a life of the mind? An adventurer into delivery?
Increase chronicles Purpura's pregnancy and the first year of her son Joseph's life. Had I not already been familiar with her writing and known it to be so richly lyric I can't say I would have picked it up for the subject matter. I no more imagine myself a mother than Purpura admits to identifying herself before the blue X slowly crossed itself on the test, an “unknown, variable quantity.” So, Increase is also about finding one's shape as it shifts literally and metaphorically, and that is a process is a poet's work and a longshoreman's. Still, I doubt I would have explored it, biased as I am against the importance of wet naps and breastfeeding. I admit Purpura gave me access to a realm I didn't imagine existed. I actually think my mother crossed it, between her job at social services and ceramics classes—that variegated plain on which one stumbles across the amaryllises of childrearing, and finds oneself capable of almost anything. I admire her for the strength of her character, but Purpura's text gives me a sense of how she reached it—through close observation, by attuning an eye so sensitive it notices:
Balls of wool pulled from the carpet have a dense center, an outer corona thinning to breath, a nimble-spoked haze that turns over in the gust and wake of footfalls.
Not since I read Alexander Dumas—or was it Jean Genet, who describes from prison that one experiences enough in a single day with human senses to digest it for a lifetime.
Many are the ways one trains attention and the cunning. I gave motherhood little credit for harnessing it, but after Purpura describes the negotiation and conflict of birth as “the mystery coming for you, creaking into your peace, into mine because I am no longer audience, but, moment to moment, protagonist, splintering away from the opening scenes, further into the act...the singular moment,” I found a curiosity I congratulated myself to scoff at before. So, we need more texts like this one, and I know they are out there. Catherine Wagner, Beth Ann Fennelly are two names that spring immediately to mind for being bold enough to write seriously about motherhood, the war of the domestic, the romance and “odd loneliness of a new friendship,” as Purpura describes the nursery softly filling with light. Dare I allow my patronized inner feminine to respect it? Have I too found in myself “all along there has been room...to feel increase in the crowded space I am becoming.” If not for motherhood, for the catch and crush of living ever more broadly, fully invested in the drama?
Increase chronicles Purpura's pregnancy and the first year of her son Joseph's life. Had I not already been familiar with her writing and known it to be so richly lyric I can't say I would have picked it up for the subject matter. I no more imagine myself a mother than Purpura admits to identifying herself before the blue X slowly crossed itself on the test, an “unknown, variable quantity.” So, Increase is also about finding one's shape as it shifts literally and metaphorically, and that is a process is a poet's work and a longshoreman's. Still, I doubt I would have explored it, biased as I am against the importance of wet naps and breastfeeding. I admit Purpura gave me access to a realm I didn't imagine existed. I actually think my mother crossed it, between her job at social services and ceramics classes—that variegated plain on which one stumbles across the amaryllises of childrearing, and finds oneself capable of almost anything. I admire her for the strength of her character, but Purpura's text gives me a sense of how she reached it—through close observation, by attuning an eye so sensitive it notices:
Balls of wool pulled from the carpet have a dense center, an outer corona thinning to breath, a nimble-spoked haze that turns over in the gust and wake of footfalls.
Not since I read Alexander Dumas—or was it Jean Genet, who describes from prison that one experiences enough in a single day with human senses to digest it for a lifetime.
Many are the ways one trains attention and the cunning. I gave motherhood little credit for harnessing it, but after Purpura describes the negotiation and conflict of birth as “the mystery coming for you, creaking into your peace, into mine because I am no longer audience, but, moment to moment, protagonist, splintering away from the opening scenes, further into the act...the singular moment,” I found a curiosity I congratulated myself to scoff at before. So, we need more texts like this one, and I know they are out there. Catherine Wagner, Beth Ann Fennelly are two names that spring immediately to mind for being bold enough to write seriously about motherhood, the war of the domestic, the romance and “odd loneliness of a new friendship,” as Purpura describes the nursery softly filling with light. Dare I allow my patronized inner feminine to respect it? Have I too found in myself “all along there has been room...to feel increase in the crowded space I am becoming.” If not for motherhood, for the catch and crush of living ever more broadly, fully invested in the drama?
November 18, 2020
I wish I would have read this when I was pregnant with my boys. And I wish I would have detailed the experience of pregnancy like this. What an artifact
July 26, 2023
Beautiful
Beautiful language. I read this slow in order to savor it all like a fine wine. Will be reading this again and again. Such beautiful writing is a gift to the world.
Beautiful language. I read this slow in order to savor it all like a fine wine. Will be reading this again and again. Such beautiful writing is a gift to the world.
April 30, 2014
This is a beautiful book, but that goes without saying, because it was written by Lia Prupura. This book, when read by the right person, at the right time, is easily 5 stars. But for me, it wasn't either of these things, so it gets 3 stars for being an excellent book, but just not for me. It was too lyrical for me to read while I'm in the midst of so much life stuff going on - I wanted to hurry the reading too much, and that isn't something that you should do when reading lyric essays. Lyric essays are like poetry - they demand silence and stillness to understand and appreciate. Also, while she has some lovely descriptions of the world, all of her descriptions of the world were in service of images and ideas and symbols, and as a writer of a nature writing bent, I get easily tired of that, and want to sometimes let a finch be a finch. Thirdly, I am not pregnant, I'm not a mother, and I never will be pregnant or a mother. I am a dedicated and doting aunt, I have friends that are moms, I have great love and empathy for moms, but it is not my singular experience. And this book is written for those who want to read about pregnancy and the early months of motherhood as a singular experience. And I love reading books about other people's lives, and to read about ways of living that are different than my own, but again, right now, this wasn't the best match for me.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews