The Women at the Well by Grace Bauer

by Grace Bauer

“In The Women at the Well, Bauer sings out of silent alternative stories of the Biblical women she first encountered as a schoolgirl listening to the nuns. Wry humor is only one element of Bauer’s illuminating re-vision as she inhabits her women in the longing, sassiness, rebellion, compassion, wavering, and triumph. She lets them like each other—Rachel and Leah reconcile—and lets them relish their bodies. Mary complains about never ‘knowing pleasure.’ She creates The Prodigal Daughter who, like Woolf’s Judith Shakespeare, experiences a vastly different fate from her male counterpart’s. But unlike poor Judith, this daughter survives and bears her own girl child . . . I had my favorites among Bauer’s women, and you will, too. Whoever they are, the Bible will never be the same.”—Carole Simmons Oles

Genres: Poetry

Paperback

About the author

A native of Pennsylvania, Grace Bauer has also lived in New Orleans, Montana, Massachusetts, Virginia, and now in Lincoln, NE, where she teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Reviews

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poems themselves honestly didn’t resonate with me much and the style didn’t grab me. I vaguely recall most of the biblical women she gave voice to, but the details of their stories don’t live in me the way I think they’d need to for me to fit the target audience of this book. After the poems though, there’s still about 1/4 to go, titled “A Revelation: On Hearing My Voice Among Others.” It’s written sort of like an undated diary. The author comes and goes throughout different points in her writing process, reflecting on what she’s feeling and remembering as she rewrites the stories of whatever biblical or mythical women she feels called to. She recounts attending Our Lady of Hungary School in Pennsylvania, a rich oral storytelling tradition handed down by the nuns, and a heap of sexism consistently thrown at her through it. She feels rooted in the archetypal meaning of the stories and sees herself in them, and re-writing them in her own voice, using their lives as a container to examine her own, gradually liberates her. She describes feeling giddy and spiritually connected, worrying she might offend people, and pacing back and forth as her thoughts sprang up, and you can see how proud she is of her work. The second to last section begins with “It is August 1992. I have come here to Fairy Stone State Park with the intention of finishing this book. I want to be done with these women. They’ve been talking my ear off for too long. Sometimes I cannot hear my own voice speak— but maybe that is the power of myths and legends. As archetypes they can add resonance; as stereotypes they can silence our voices.” The book is a physical manifestation of the labor that brought her to that conclusion, so it is a piece of art that I am proud to own. The poems themselves were okay. From my vantage point, I would’ve enjoyed the book more if the “Revelation” was at the front rather than the back (I do get that it’s partly called a revelation because it’s at the end, but I don’t think it’s worth it). I think I’d have gotten more out of the poetry if I had the diary as an introduction for the emotional context.

There’s something so synchronistic about me owning this book. I was out planting extra copies of my own labor-of-emotional-transformation book of poems in Little Free Libraries as I took a walk. And I kept finding copies of this one in every place I stopped. Of course I took one. How could I not? It belongs on my shelf.

[grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love how Grace Bauer gives voices to the "nobodies" of the Bible, and I think she has a strong narrative voice. However, I think her writing style would lend better to prose as I did not feel myself immersed in the lyricism of this poetry and, to an extent, I found her interpretation of biblical women surface-level and underdeveloped.