The Bad Wife Handbook

by Rachel Zucker

A courageous and innovative ode to monogamy and its challenges

Rachel Zucker's third book of poems is a darkly comic collection that looks unsparingly at the difficulties and compromises of married life. Formally innovative and blazingly direct, The Bad Wife Handbook cross-examines marriage, motherhood, monogamy, and writing itself. Rachel Zucker's upending of grammatical and syntactic expectations lends these poems an urgent richness and aesthetic complexity that mirrors the puzzles of real life. Candid, subversive, and genuinely moving, The Bad Wife Handbook is an important portrait of contemporary marriage and the writing life, of emotional connection and disconnection, of togetherness and aloneness.

Genres: Poetry

130 pages, Hardcover

First published December 28, 2007

About the author

Rachel Zucker is the author of Museum of Accidents (Wave Books, 2009), which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of The Bad Wife Handbook (Wesleyan University, 2007), The Last Clear Narrative (Wesleyan University, 2004), Eating in the Underworld (Wesleyan University, 2003), and Annunciation (The Center for Book Arts, 2002), as well as the co-editor (with Arielle Greenberg) of Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama's First 100 Days and Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections (both from the University of Iowa Press). A graduate of Yale and the Iowa Writer's Workshop, Zucker has taught at several institutions, including NYU and Yale. She currently lives in NYC with her husband and three sons, and is a certified labor doula.

For more information on this author, go to:
http://www.wavepoetry.com/authors/63-...

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rachel Zucker strips away the accumulated layers of roles women (and mothers in particular) are expected to play in our society. Honest and nuanced while still tinged with humor - a very difficult feat indeed.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was excited to get this book in the mail because I really loved one of her other poetry books, Eating in the Underworld. When it arrived (just a random Amazon used purchase) I discovered it was a signed copy. Sweet! But as for my review --- Zucker is playful with language, fills her poems with these beautiful and surprising little metaphors, and the subject matter hits that nice balance of being completely autobiographical yet can-be-applied-to-all. (And by the way, you don't have to be in a struggling marriage to enjoy and relate to these poems, just saying). My favorite sections of the book were the first and last chapters because they are a bit more conversational, though I can see why others might enjoy the "Annunciation" chapter better. I wasn't surprised to get to the Notes section in the back and see the Annunciation chapter won Barrow Street prize and a big award from Lynn Emanuel (who by the way, if you enjoy poets that mess around with language, is a MUST READ). I had to smile when I saw how the book binding was shaped, too. Maybe the book is wider (and hardcover) because many of the poems contain long lines but perhaps it's also because this way the book seems like a kid's book or coffee table book. "The Bad Wife Handbook," right next to "100 Beautiful Nature Locations" or "How to do Magic," or whatever. Anyway, good read.

[Saara Raappana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read a few reviews that say the one-off poems that begin and end this book are inferior to its interconnected series of middle-section poems, but I disagree. They're almost all compelling studies of mother/wife-hood, but the middle poems seemed almost self-indulgent and sloppy, while the shorter ones at the front and back were lean and resonant--more so, I thought, for their compression. Maybe it's just a taste thing.

[Rowan · Rating 2 out of 5]

It seemed like the stand alone poems at the front were all the same poem, which might have been one great poem about adultery and sex and marriage and lust, but instead are several mediocre pseudo-bravely confessional poems about extra-marital desires. And perhaps because I'm not very interested in reflections on motherhood, even though she attempts a distancing from the subject by making the language a bit abstract and strange, I was not compelled by the longer poems either. It all just seems a little repetitive.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree with the reviewer that said she found the first and last parts of this poetry book most compelling--those were five star parts for sure. Plus I always love a wink and a nod towards mathematical and scientific teriminology. The middle part rambled though. Would love to give this 4 1/2 starts though.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am the bad husband!

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I am equally and at once estranged from the person I knew as I / and from the mossy being made so carefully"

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure where to begin. You see, I felt a connection to the poetry, and yet a disconnection as well. I was moved literally, forced to go in many directions. Wit is required to read this poetry. There were things that went over my head. Which makes me determined to go back and read it again, and I'm sure again after that. If I had to describe this poetry in minimal words... disorienting, scattered, conflicted, pressured, angered, lustful and ambiguous. She shares life as a poet, wife, and mother. Two out of three have consumed most of my adult life and enabled me to read in between the lines, not a requirement to enjoy. Lots of innuendos, contradictions, observations, and shared experiences were cleverly written. She made it simple yet complex, made it subjective, made me feel, made me think, and see outside my normal view (whatever that is); I'm trying to figure out my own gift wrapped box, that is my life. I'm just beginning to live in the world of poetry, as my first contemporary read it offers something very personal and something very global in which women can relate. It clarified the importance of "element of surprise". I don't know why I chose this book first, actually I do. The title chose me because of the energy flowing in my life. No one's perfect. Aren't we all at times, a bad wife?

[missy jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the collection as a whole was pretty good, but the middle of it catapulted it to four-stars because, so much, I love her poems about motherhood. Seriously, try a few of these lines on for size. (Taken out of the poems, they are not done justice, but I don't want to risk wrongly-formatting a poem and ruining it forever):

"if there are nests discarded on the sidewalk
I step around them knowing what it costs to weave one"

"a woman with young children is not a woman but a mammal, salve, croon, water carrier"

"I am equally and at once estranged from the person I knew as I
and from the mossy being made so carefully"

"my love is the bent body, the mastered spine"

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as fabulous as _The Last Clear Narrative_, but good.

Happy I own it.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first 12 or so poems didn't really grab me. I think the middle and ending ones are more interesting and dynamic--it seems there's more at stake in them.

[Leonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poetry as unusual as the title.

[Gabriela Teixeira · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry. Couldn't finish. It's just that's not my style.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

. . . synonyms do not exist.

- Donald Hall

The poems of The Bad Wife Handbook are remarkable both for their "unsparingly at the difficulties and compromises of married life", and their formally innovative style (not limited to her play with syntax - as suggested by the quote from Donald Hall, which appears at the beginning of The Bad Wife Handbook)...

The basketball makes him not my husband
and saying so in poems makes me

the bad wife. Where is the private, i.e., impassive
mask I purchased for my wedding

but then forgot to wear?

My mind wrote me a letter requesting to be
left out of it. My body sent flowers

and a note: "sorry for your loss."
But both paid to see the flop and staying in 'til the river.

Better to fold the winning hand that fall in love
with your cards, says the husband.

- The Tell, pg. 13

*

bed as wide as it is long

the night inhuman calm

the outlets and picture frames and decorative plates are safe

the bathtub and mirror and doors and linens

I am as light as negligee

have not my army's encourage

- Squirrel in a Palm Tree, pg. 34

*

I want to change your mind. Not
you.

You're, as you are, what I want, even his
blinking neon: [no] indecision

vacancy sign. I have room
for you and these untrue

I mean disloyal
affections. I'm

a penny. Hardly
something. One

in a history of immodest
women: want, wants, wonton, I.

- Autography, pg. 89

I am particularly interested in the role of dreams and dreaming, their positive and negative incarnations, the absence of the husband and children punctuating the dichotomy between dreaming and waking...

[...]

In the next dream I shave my head
and find my skull misshapen. In the next dream

I am raped in the elevator. The doorman
steps over my body. He has your face.

- Where I want Instead of Paris, pg. 14

*

[...]

I dream a woman puts a gun in my mouth
to make me choose - lustrous, sleek, sexed.

[...]

- Floating Wick in Petrol, pg. 20

*

I am dreaming a hole right into the voice of God.
Straight into the dark place where my children were made

bu can't follow me back to. Right into the room
whose windows are too high up to see out,

though the sloped roof is too low for me to stand up.

[...]

- What Is Not Science Is Art Is Nature, pg. 24

Also noteworthy are the multiple poems entitled "Monogamist". In the vein of Gertrude Stein, who once stated that "there is no such thing as repetition, only insistence", the repetition of the title "Monogamist" is undoubtedly a form of insistence, as it is undeniable something insisted upon in the context of marriage...

A human being can't compare
size and brightness

on two occasions. So we say
the moon has a dark side.

We say the tide twice a day.
I say that man there, so unlike

my husband.

- Monogamist, pg. 3

*

Riding a bike down a flight
of steps misnames them,

reveals their lusty gravity.

Have you heard that Brontosaurus
is a Camarasaurus head on

an Apatosaurus body? - my
love's like that: shaped,

named beast did, did not exist.

They should be called falls, this
plummet.

- Monogamist, pg. 8

*

I've fallen _____ with him, stupid
cliché, with his dark blue

officewear. Maybe

I just love my little boy too much - he
looks like him - itself a grievious treason.

Just ask my older son. Ask
the husband. Ask anyone. Ask

the language for one decent synonym
and watch it stutter: perseveration,

obsession, attention to detail
aren't love exactly nor is

chastity enough punishment.

- Monogamist, pg. 18

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading Museum of Accidents, I noticed immediately the resemblance between Zucker and E. E. Cummings. In the Bad Wife Handbook, Zucker’s poems are liberated in form, but seem haunted by an obsession with structure and content. Zucker doesn’t hide in science, but works alongside its language to find an intersection.

To be honest, the physical size of the book, while unique, made it difficult to hold, and therefore incited me to read faster to put it down.

Special thanks to Megan for lending me this book.

[Aman Reading · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this type of poetry does not cater to my preference in style or theme, nor would I recommend this collection of poetry to someone, Zucker does produce a number of interesting lines, images, and verbal juxtapositions. Poems I enjoyed the most: avoid; santo spirito; and Autography 9.

[Molly]

Rachel Zucker's Balancing the Tide interview.