Does She Have a Name?

by George Witte

"Extraordinary...demonstrates unflinchingly that what lies at the heart of faith is love." --Frank Wilson, Philadelphia Inquirer


Poetry. Dramatic and intimate, the poems in DOES SHE HAVE A NAME? trace the journeys of two women--one middle aged, the other her infant granddaughter--through near-mortal encounters with medical crises. Both survive their trials, passing from life to death and back again; both face wrenching, unpredictable challenges; both emerge from years of therapy, made whole but alone, changed by experience in apparent and invisible ways. Moving from a neonatal intensive care unit's urgent ministrations to the patient work of neurologists and speech pathologists, told from the perspectives of parent, child, husband, and witness, and exploring questions of disability, difference, and the calculated value of human life, DOES SHE HAVE A NAME? is an affecting, provocative book of poems.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published May 19, 2014

About the author

George Witte is the author of four books of poems: An Abundance of Caution, Does She Have a Name?, Deniability and The Apparitioners. His poems have been published in a range of journals including Consequence, Five Points, Nimrod, Revel, The New Criterion, The Yale Review, Think, and elsewhere, and anthologized in The Best American Poetry, Rabbit Ears (poems about television), The Doll Collection, (poems about dolls), and What the House Knows, (poems about houses, shelter, families, and secrets). He has received the Frederick Bock Award from Poetry magazine and a fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts. He lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

Reviews

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I opened this book and started reading the first poem about the botched birth of the author's daughter, I had to close the book and put it away for a while. It was that disturbing. Which I think is a good thing.
This is not poetry about trees, flowers and literature, but rather poetry about some of the most harrowing experiences we go through, acquired the hard way.

Does She Have a Name traces two lives that cross each other: the nearly fatal birth of the author's daughter and the progressive failure and death of his acerbic mother. This is very much a book about parenthood, and how having a child turns us back on our own childhood and our understanding of our parents. Witte covers the gut-wrenching physicality of birth, with it's hospital technology and deep exhaustion, and then the deeply complex feelings of raising a handicapped child. However, every parent will recognize the subtle politics of playdates and birthday parties, and the growing feeling of helplessness as our parents struggle to hold on against the encroaching years.


Concise, sometimes disturbing, but ultimately very rewarding, especially if you are a parent.

[Valeri Drach · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the founder and coordinator of the Friends of the Library Poetry Night Series for the last decade, I have come to realize that many poets work through the fire of life experience, much like a kiln. Challenge, tragedy, triumph by just living through it. George Witte has written a collection of narrative poems that seem to talk directly to me. Anyone who has lived in to their fifth decade has worked through these fires. I wish they could all write poems as well as George Witte. I have rarely been moved by any writing as much as by this book of poems. Thank God for George Witte and the brave women in his life. Everyone should own a copy of Does She Have a Name. This is why I work to keep a poetry series in Highland Park, to have poets who quicken something inside of us, to speak to our souls and to the challenge of living. George talks to the quirkiness of life, chance, and the ability to hash it all out in a poem. Thank you George, again and again.

[Bill Glose · Rating 5 out of 5]

These imagistic, narrative poems tell the story of one man's relationship with two women in his life, his mother and his daughter, both survivors of near-death encounters and left damaged. The glimpses that Witte shares with us of their lives are both profound and, at times, heartbreaking.

[Magdalena Dushkina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an emotional time reading these poems. A saturated, intense writing of a very much heart-felt life experience.

[Damian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking.