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I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom
Acclaimed for combining the accessible and profound, her poems about motherhood are some of her most moving and disarmingly candid. I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom is an anthology of her poems on being a mother—childbirth to empty nest—as well as being a daughter with all the teenaged messiness, drama and conflict, to finally caring for one's mother suffering from dementia. Culled from her four collections as well as a selection of new work, these poems, heartbreaking, funny, surprising, and touching, explore the quirky, unexpected observations, and bittersweet moments mothers and daughters share. These evocative poems do not glorify mothers, but rather look under the hood of motherhood and explore the deep crevices and emotions of these impenetrable relationships: the love, despair, joy, humor and gratitude that fills our lives.
- GenresPoetry
128 pages, Paperback
First published April 19, 2022
4 people are currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
Kim Dower
7 books28 followers"What She Wants: Poems on Obsession, Desire, Despair, Euphoria showcases Kim Dower's distinctive and engaging style when it comes to crafting emotionally engaging, resonating, and memorable verse. Her word smithing, poetry based storytelling skills are truly impressive, making What She Wants especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, community, and college/university library Contemporary American Poetry collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.”
-Midwest Book Review
Kim Dower is the bestselling poet of six collections from Red Hen Press. Her latest, What She Wants: Poems on Obsession, Desire, Despair Euphoria, will be published on January 14th, 2025. Kim was City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood from October 2016 to October 2018. I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom (2022), an Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist, was called a “fantastic collection” by The Washington Post, “impressively insightful, thought-provoking, and truly memorable” by The Midwest Book Review, and Shelf-Awareness said, “These gorgeous gems are energized by the sheer power of her wit and irreverent style.” Sunbathing on Tyrone Power’s Grave (2019) won the 2020 Independent Publishers Book Award Gold Medal for Poetry. Her first collection, Air Kissing on Mars (2010), appeared on the Poetry Foundation’s Contemporary Best Sellers list and was described by the Los Angeles Times as “sensual and evocative … seamlessly combining humor and heartache.” Kim’s work has been featured in numerous literary journals including Plume, Ploughshares, Rattle, The James Dickey Review, and Garrison Keillor's “The Writer's Almanac,” and her poems are included in several anthologies. She has taught in numerous writing programs across the country, from the B.A. program at Antioch University Los Angeles to Emerson College in Boston. Next year, Kim celebrates the 40th anniversary of her literary and media services company, Kim-from-L.A. Born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and a graduate of Emerson College’s Creative Writing BFA program, Kim now lives with her family in West Hollywood, CA. To learn more about Kim, visit her poetry website: www.kimdowerpoetry.com.
-Midwest Book Review
Kim Dower is the bestselling poet of six collections from Red Hen Press. Her latest, What She Wants: Poems on Obsession, Desire, Despair Euphoria, will be published on January 14th, 2025. Kim was City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood from October 2016 to October 2018. I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom (2022), an Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist, was called a “fantastic collection” by The Washington Post, “impressively insightful, thought-provoking, and truly memorable” by The Midwest Book Review, and Shelf-Awareness said, “These gorgeous gems are energized by the sheer power of her wit and irreverent style.” Sunbathing on Tyrone Power’s Grave (2019) won the 2020 Independent Publishers Book Award Gold Medal for Poetry. Her first collection, Air Kissing on Mars (2010), appeared on the Poetry Foundation’s Contemporary Best Sellers list and was described by the Los Angeles Times as “sensual and evocative … seamlessly combining humor and heartache.” Kim’s work has been featured in numerous literary journals including Plume, Ploughshares, Rattle, The James Dickey Review, and Garrison Keillor's “The Writer's Almanac,” and her poems are included in several anthologies. She has taught in numerous writing programs across the country, from the B.A. program at Antioch University Los Angeles to Emerson College in Boston. Next year, Kim celebrates the 40th anniversary of her literary and media services company, Kim-from-L.A. Born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and a graduate of Emerson College’s Creative Writing BFA program, Kim now lives with her family in West Hollywood, CA. To learn more about Kim, visit her poetry website: www.kimdowerpoetry.com.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 25, 2023
Mom poems
September 23, 2022
This poetry collection is really wonderful but also heart wrenching. The story evoked so much emotion as I watched the author grapple with her mother's dementia. The aftermath and loneliness of loss and the aftermath made me sad. Yet she also expressed some humor in the saddest parts.
The book is a lot about different mothers, the mothering we had, and what we wished we'd had. One of the poems in the book, as you talk about, is called "Different Mothers," where the author wrote, "I've read about the ones who garden, teach their daughters to cut a rose just above the thorns so a fresh bud will pop up like toast in time for breakfast. These different mothers show their daughters how to plant tomato seeds in the damp earth, tingle when the first green fruit appears, and when they explode into deep red, pick them off the vine, slice them in their sunny kitchens. These are mothers whose daughters learned through smells of lakes, weeds, pastry dough, have memories of lightning bugs in jars mothers have poked holes into. These are different mothers. I am not one. My mother didn't know about soil or earthworms. City mothers, we know about bus routes, restaurants, Broadway, the people on the eighth floor. Mine taught me to accessorize, bring the ideal hostess gift, have my keys in hand when I enter the building. I have no daughter, but my son can look anyone in the eye, tell them what he's thinking. We eat tomatoes from the grocery. Our roses are store-bought. Different mothers sound better, and I think about what might have been, calling to the birds, naming the stars, fingers locked together while hiking on hidden trails, cleaning home-grown mint before placing it in tea before bed. I'll flag a cab instead." I love every line of that.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://www.momsdonthavetimetoreadboo...
The book is a lot about different mothers, the mothering we had, and what we wished we'd had. One of the poems in the book, as you talk about, is called "Different Mothers," where the author wrote, "I've read about the ones who garden, teach their daughters to cut a rose just above the thorns so a fresh bud will pop up like toast in time for breakfast. These different mothers show their daughters how to plant tomato seeds in the damp earth, tingle when the first green fruit appears, and when they explode into deep red, pick them off the vine, slice them in their sunny kitchens. These are mothers whose daughters learned through smells of lakes, weeds, pastry dough, have memories of lightning bugs in jars mothers have poked holes into. These are different mothers. I am not one. My mother didn't know about soil or earthworms. City mothers, we know about bus routes, restaurants, Broadway, the people on the eighth floor. Mine taught me to accessorize, bring the ideal hostess gift, have my keys in hand when I enter the building. I have no daughter, but my son can look anyone in the eye, tell them what he's thinking. We eat tomatoes from the grocery. Our roses are store-bought. Different mothers sound better, and I think about what might have been, calling to the birds, naming the stars, fingers locked together while hiking on hidden trails, cleaning home-grown mint before placing it in tea before bed. I'll flag a cab instead." I love every line of that.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://www.momsdonthavetimetoreadboo...
December 27, 2022
Review: I Wore This Dress Today For You, Mom (Kim Dower) My daughter sent this to me for my birthday. I am not sure where I read a review for it myself, but it sounded like a nice book of poetry, and so it is, although (perhaps just because I have had a couple of difficult months lately) it wandered rather more than I had hoped into areas of sadness. "...Our people leave us / and we let them go. They fade / into the tapestry of the dead." For example! She is a good poet, her words are lovely and often haunting, the rhythms most pleasing. They are "Poems on Motherhood".... but mostly about losing mother. Evocative for sure, and a good collection to keep at the ready for those moments when you just want to feel a poem.
did-not-finish
October 5, 2022DNF about 20% in. This collection is too saccharine/sentimental for my tastes but considering my state of near-constant depression I'm very biased.
February 18, 2023
Enjoyed every poem in this book. I liked the language, the modernity, the emotion in each – a picture built up in my mind as I read each one.
1. SARDINES: pg 33 – she’s eating sardines at a restaurant and “as I scoop out the second eyeball” she thinks “I want to eat what stares at me”! Rather bizarre, but OK…
2. MY MOTHER WANTS EXTRA CRISP BACON: pg 38 “…houses others live in, why don’t we live there, always wanting what she never had,” = this is sad. As mother is in her last years, she is still not reconciled to her lot, that from the sounds of it wasn’t that bad…
3. GAIL EXPLAINS ABOUT MY MOTHER’S GLASSES: pg 40 – “she calls to tell me her glasses are missing,” “I’ll know they’re in the fridge, icy as the ginger ale that settles her stomach, stiff as the roast beef, going bad by the day.”
4. BOTTLED WATER: pg 43 – she buys both types of water and writes “I’m now brilliantly hydrated. Both real and smart…” – clever line.
5. THE SALVATON ARMY WON’T TAKE THE FUTON: pg 45 – moving things out of her mother’s apartment - “each piece caked with the kind of dust that settles after we give up”. Also: “propped up by pillows someone recently died leaning against…” paints a picture…
6. VISITING ELEANOR – pg 65 - loved this one…many highlights because I loved the whole thing.
7. SLEEP OVER – “He’d only bet on ponies with the same name as one of his daughters, or grandchildren, a horse with a name that start with K or J, S or N.” And “rip the cellophane off a new Bicycle deck” – pictures painted again…
8. MINOR TREMORS – pg 73, about a slight earthquake and our bodies “struggling against the obscene force of earth”.
9. TIME OF ARRIVAL – I liked this because my daughter and I still today “always reported when one another landed”.
10. MY MOTHER BAKES SUGAR COOKIES – pg 83 – my favorite poem in the book.
11. WHY WE DREAM – pg 84, “When I told my mother that I gave it (black cashmere coat) to my aunt she was mad then happy because it made me a nice person and proved she’d been a good mother.”
12. ALTERNATIVE FLUE – pg 87, “Yes, she thinks, would give up years of future to have one month from the past, cuddling him” – made me wonder if I’d elect to do that if given the chance…
13. EXTRACTION – pg 90, perhaps my second favorite, the sentences run-on and I have to parse it in my head, and I too recently had a tooth removed but it wasn’t at all traumatic like this one in the poem might have been.
14. LATE SEPTEMBER – pg 95, “7:11 p.m., dark again as daylight, reluctant felon turns itself in.” And, “loving the sun for telling the moon to get lost”
1. SARDINES: pg 33 – she’s eating sardines at a restaurant and “as I scoop out the second eyeball” she thinks “I want to eat what stares at me”! Rather bizarre, but OK…
2. MY MOTHER WANTS EXTRA CRISP BACON: pg 38 “…houses others live in, why don’t we live there, always wanting what she never had,” = this is sad. As mother is in her last years, she is still not reconciled to her lot, that from the sounds of it wasn’t that bad…
3. GAIL EXPLAINS ABOUT MY MOTHER’S GLASSES: pg 40 – “she calls to tell me her glasses are missing,” “I’ll know they’re in the fridge, icy as the ginger ale that settles her stomach, stiff as the roast beef, going bad by the day.”
4. BOTTLED WATER: pg 43 – she buys both types of water and writes “I’m now brilliantly hydrated. Both real and smart…” – clever line.
5. THE SALVATON ARMY WON’T TAKE THE FUTON: pg 45 – moving things out of her mother’s apartment - “each piece caked with the kind of dust that settles after we give up”. Also: “propped up by pillows someone recently died leaning against…” paints a picture…
6. VISITING ELEANOR – pg 65 - loved this one…many highlights because I loved the whole thing.
7. SLEEP OVER – “He’d only bet on ponies with the same name as one of his daughters, or grandchildren, a horse with a name that start with K or J, S or N.” And “rip the cellophane off a new Bicycle deck” – pictures painted again…
8. MINOR TREMORS – pg 73, about a slight earthquake and our bodies “struggling against the obscene force of earth”.
9. TIME OF ARRIVAL – I liked this because my daughter and I still today “always reported when one another landed”.
10. MY MOTHER BAKES SUGAR COOKIES – pg 83 – my favorite poem in the book.
11. WHY WE DREAM – pg 84, “When I told my mother that I gave it (black cashmere coat) to my aunt she was mad then happy because it made me a nice person and proved she’d been a good mother.”
12. ALTERNATIVE FLUE – pg 87, “Yes, she thinks, would give up years of future to have one month from the past, cuddling him” – made me wonder if I’d elect to do that if given the chance…
13. EXTRACTION – pg 90, perhaps my second favorite, the sentences run-on and I have to parse it in my head, and I too recently had a tooth removed but it wasn’t at all traumatic like this one in the poem might have been.
14. LATE SEPTEMBER – pg 95, “7:11 p.m., dark again as daylight, reluctant felon turns itself in.” And, “loving the sun for telling the moon to get lost”
April 26, 2022
I am a big fan of Kim Dower's poetry. I love her poems about her mother because they are sweet, sad, dark, and so funny. She has such a unique way of looking at difficult and loving situations and making you get in touch with all your own emotions. For anyone who is a mom or has a mom, you will relate to this book and see the humor, love, and pain in these relationships.
May 29, 2022
I don't frequent poetry so I'm sure there's amazingness I'm missing. That being said, a few of these poems hit me where it hurts as a mom. Truthful and honest and sad and familiar. I enjoyed this quick jaunt through an unfamiliar genre.
December 1, 2021
Praise be to Nancy for getting me this arc. Dynamite
February 12, 2022
I just pre ordered this book. I am a huge fan of Kim Dower's poetry -- she writes the pathos, the humor, and the truth in our hearts.
December 18, 2022
Poems about motherhood and grief.
December 6, 2023
I like to think that this is a collection of poems that I can read years later and still find as beautiful and relatable as I do now.
November 13, 2022
Some sweet, some not so sweet reflections on having and being a mom. May be a good gift for a first time mum.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews