World of Made and Unmade: A Poem

by Jane Mead

On the National Book Award Longlist for Poetry 2016

"World of Made and Unmade is a deep blue yarn of very fine thread. We know much of poetry ever was and ever shall be elegiac. Jane Mead’s poem could be neither more literal nor nearer the verge of appearing a little too perfect for this world. As the laundry room floods and the grape harvest gets done; as Michoacan waits for another time, her beautiful, practical mother is dying. Ashes are scattered in the pecan groves of her own Rincon, her own corner of the world, and the poet, in elementary script, draws a sustaining record of the only feeling worth the struggle, and she cannot, will not, does not fuck it up." — C.D. Wright

Jane Mead's fifth collection candidly and openly explores the long process that is death. These resonant poems discover what it means to live, die, and come home again. We're drawn in by sorrow and grief, but also the joys of celebrating a long life and how simple it is to find laughter and light in the quietest and darkest of moments.

…
This year I have disappeared
from the harvest routine—

the pickers throwing their trays
under the vines, grape hooks
flying, the heavy bunches flying—

pickers running to the running tractors
with trays held high above their heads
and the arc of dark fruit

falling heavily into the half-ton bins.

The hornets swarming in the diesel-filled air.

Jane Mead is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Money Money Money | Water Water Water (2014). Her poems appear regularly in journals and anthologies, and she's the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, and a Lannan Foundation Completion Grant. She teaches at the low-residency MFA program at Drew University and farms in Northern California.

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 13, 2016

Reviews

[Terry Everett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book-length elegy, its graphics and photos, is very moving. I have a friend who lives a little south of Rincon, New Mexico, and I am made to remember time at the Grand Canyon of the Rio Grande.

[Sundry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mother and daughter's journey toward the end of life in modern times. Moving, never cloying. It is never easy, but sometimes there is still beauty.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the role of the storyteller "trying not to fuck it up" -- "it" being an account of her mother's final days, as the speaker brings the mother from Rincon, New Mexico to Napa, California, to converse with her in her going across -- Jane Mead writes a poem of the grape harvest, a deep ecological rhythm into which a new life leading out of life carries in it a question: "How will you spend your courage,| her life asks my life." That's one question. Another question, this one narrative, is asked much more implicitly: Who are these two people to each other? The mother, in her New Mexican retreat, has cultivated her distance, and now her daughter gets under the covers of her mother's death-bed, and they make a skein of their "identical" fingers. The mother is the grand-daughter of a great American scientist, the ex-wife of another, nearly as pre-eminent. The daughter who has inherited his farm manages to get neither "big or small with language," "some other way than blind." There's a shrewdness in arrangements by which Mead's readers know they're in the skein. Like her mother's documents, including one plotting the Rinconian pecan orchard rows, within the skein, the storyteller (the reader, too) is welcome to identify.

[Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

To quote Donald Revell from the back cover of this book; "In Jane Mead's "World of Made and Unmade," we find distances we'd never expected in the gilded lapse of time, and Mead sets these distances into motion, into a cinema of true feeling and insuperable dignity. Life is unassailable in death, and Jane Mead proves it."

This book is published by Alice James Books from Farmington, Maine. According to the information in the book, " Alice James Books seeks to support women writers and was named for Alice James, sister to William and Henry, whose extraordinary gift for writing went unrecognized in her lifetime."

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mead has written an elegiac poem about the death of her mother. Accomplished. Sorrowful. Eloquent.

[iba · Rating 2 out of 5]

didnt move me as much as i had hoped it would.

“Saying you want to die
is one thing, she pointed out,
but dying is quite another.”

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

A subtle witness of existence with beautiful synchronies that acquaint us with the Rio Grande River around Rincon, New Mexico: the steps a mother takes toward death simultaneous with the preparations for harvest in a vineyard; the recognition of the longstanding weave between Mexico and United States that has evolved as the pecan trees planted by the poet's mother have grown. And against this scene, we experience a love between a mother and a daughter that gives each a simple, hard won honesty, much like the harvest of grapes out of a parched land that occurs as the mother passes.

[Heather Melichamp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jane Mead in her 5th compilation of poetry in World of Made and Unmade has done an astounding job at weaving together the fragility of life along with the immense joy of living every moment to it’s fullest. “The third time my mother fell / she stopped saying she wanted to die.” We go on this journey from grief and sorrow to gratitude and memory so seamlessly.

she did what nobody
could have predicted:

she developed a sense of humor.
An emergency sense of humor.

I picked this book to read and review because of my connection with my own mother’s passing. There are so many things you think you will do in a certain situation and Jane does a superb job at juggle reality with hopes and how sometimes you turn to the “rules” laid out as a source of solace and peace in a long yet short season of dying.

Now my mother’s every exhale
Is a scratchy scream.

Parry is trying to get through-
she says what it says
to say in the white binder:

Mom, let go—Mom!

But my mother’s heart
is a strong heart.

The pattern and format of this book is very unique. The line placement and how they land on the page’s edges and flow one after another add to the imagery and words being read. There are pages with multiple lines almost top to bottom. Then other pages completely blank offering a visual pause as the poems eb and flow. There is one photograph, one illustration and one list included in the book at very poignant times. Jane has really taken the time to add just what is necessary to convey this family of hers and the passing of a great woman.

She died on her 84th birthday
about which she had this to say
to herself, albeit two days early:

Happy Birthday on the very day,
and all the usual pleasantries.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book-length poem chronicling the death of the poet's mother.

excerpt:

"With the mediocre portraits / of her three children / hung at the foot of her bed, // I tried to joke that she now / was trapped into looking / into our heads. And trapped thusly, // she did what nobody / could have predicted: // she developed a sense of humor. / An emergency sense of humor. // That dark room in which / we finally spoke."

and

"Truth is, I do not feel my mother's presence. / Truth is, if ever a person were to fail // to become a disembodied presence it would be // my beautiful and practical mother."

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't read much poetry books, but I really liked this one. World of Made and Unmade makes the perfect title.

[G.G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most haunting and beautiful poem I have read in recent memory. A triumph!

[Neha · Rating 1 out of 5]

Even the best(or worst?) of the lot who by habit would read too much into the most useless stuff will draw the line at this.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

everyone wants to write the perfect grief poem but who else could get this close

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a beautiful read this is. (If I weren't so stingy with stars, this would have been five.) Written as a book-long elegy, the poem's elegance, tenderness and at times, humor gave a clear-eyed portrait of Mead's mother's death. Just wonderful.

[Kyla Daniels · Rating 4 out of 5]

This poem follows the dying process of the speakers mother. Beautiful and deep with the review of life throughout this poem. Showing how death can be beautiful despite the hardship and grief.