The Grand Permission: New Writings on Poetics and Motherhood

by Patricia Dienstfrey (Editor), Brenda Hillman (Editor), Rachel Blau DuPlessis (Foreword)

The Grand Permission is a book of deeply enriching and articulate meditations on motherhood and the composition of poetry by practicing poets. The 32 contributors write with originality and commitment about the startling, intense and dynamic connections between motherhood and creative achievement--connections that shed new light on the nature of language and genre, the practical life of mothering and the writing vocation. The book combines intimacy of tone and discussion of serious personal issues in new essays written in varied and innovative forms. This wonderful book is an ideal gift for mothers of all ages and creative pursuits, and especially valuable for writers concerned about how life decisions impact artistic choices.

CONTRIBUTORS: Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Jill Bialosky, Eavan Boland, Stephanie Brown, Norma Cole, Gillian Conoley, Toi Derricotte, Barbara Einzig, Carolyn Forche, Kathleen Fraser, Susan Gervirtz, Dale Going, Susan Griffin, Mimiko Hahn, Carla Harryman, Fanny Howe, Erica Hunt, Claudia Keelan, Maxine Kumin, Laura Moriarty, Carol Muske, Alice Notley, Alicia Ostriker, Maureen Owen, Frances Phillips, Pam Rehm, Elizabeth Robinson, Camille Roy, Mary Margaret Soan, C.D. Wright.

Genres: Poetry, Parenting, Anthologies

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 8, 2003

Reviews

[William Stobb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This anthology of essays taught me a lot about writers' approaches to the page. The writers are all mothers and poets, and they connect those two aspects of their lives. Those connections are interesting. I was mostly interested in just hearing how these good poets think about their work.

[Molly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upon completion: (3/20/12--happy equinox!) What I'd like, is to give this book five stars over and over again. I'd like to start again. And when I finish, I'd like to start again, again. I love the range of these essays, the voices, and I love how I would "HA!" at some points, "OH!" in sorrow at others, and speak back. It's one of the few books I've actively written in the margins with, which is something I ought to do more, but I felt compelled to have a conversation. I hope to lend this book to a friend, and I hope she writes in it too. And I hope I read it again when my toddler is older, or when I have another baby, so I can see how that lens redefines my reactions, and I'll converse with it then too.

I hope to transcribe some of my favorite bits here, over the coming days (weeks?).


"But neither writing nor motherhood is mere attitude. Each performance is a hard-won process, an action selected freeze-framed from a sequence of failed attempts to match an aesthetic or emotional ideal. Each act of writing or mothering stuns by the immensity of its hidden archaeology of failure, riddled origins, hidden clauses, minute pleasures achieved through tactical approximations. Poetry and mothering have this in common with other human activities that manage to be part of the real, and in doing so they can transform our sense of the real, even as they are incomplete, imperfect, or impartial." pg. 18, Erica Hunt, "The World Is Not Precisely Round"

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many good essays in here, a wide range. I'll return to it. Makes things seem possible. "Tempered by motherhood, I learned a way of coming to writing, a gathering as of laundry. . . the work collects in moments, for months, in fragments." -- from Dale Going's essay