Lying In: Poems

by Elizabeth Metzger

A devastating, vulnerable collection tracing high-risk pregnancy and new motherhood amid grief.

“All my life all I’ve wanted was to be myself / and someone else,” writes Elizabeth Metzger. From the shadowy perspective of confinement, where the presence of death unsettles all outcomes, these poems examine an expansion and fracturing of the self—into motherhood as well as childhood, into past selves and future unknowns. The child becomes parent, the parent becomes child, the child arrives but in doing so is lost. New loss haunts new life, and life becomes “one or two lives.” The door is more valuable than the prize behind it.
With ambivalence as well as deep feeling, Metzger wonders how a single body can be expected to hold both immense joy and immense mourning, profound longing and creeping numbness, when one so often overtakes the other. She plunges into the darkness inside—of the gloomy room, the inner body, the afterlife and the pre-language mind—and sends back “a searchlight across the underworld,” Eurydice in search of herself.
Aching and contemplative, Lying In is an exquisite portrait of an in-between time—and of the person who emerges on the other side. “Isn’t it obvious how we’ve changed?”

Genres: Poetry

86 pages, Paperback

Published April 11, 2023

Reviews

[Aumaine Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beguiling, otherworldly, sometimes opaque or inscrutable, like her teacher Lucie, yet reverent, piercing, often true. The fourth section is a true standout—bright and heartbreaking and mercurial.

[Anne (Not of Green Gables)]

Some poetry collections just don't click with you and that is A okay. If you enjoyed Bless The Daughter Who Was Raised By The Voice In Her Head, then I'd recommend this one.

[Renee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of these poems I really liked (or at the very least I found something to appreciate), but most just seemed like jumbles of mixed metaphors. Confessional ramblings. Abstractions wrapped in pseudo-imagery. I felt nothing reading this collection. I was just . . . numb and confused. Rereading the poems just left me more confused. Is this really the stuff we're publishing in the likes of the New Yorker, Poetry, and the Paris Review? Okay then. Clearly I'm just not cerebral enough to understand such high-level stuff.

[Diana Arterian · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a stunning collection. Clearly in the vein of Sarah Vap and others who write powerfully and with the strange language (in a very good way) that attempts to describe the maternal body, maternity, and life. I wish I had known about it sooner!

[Carly Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love, love how strange this book is--the syntax is intoxicating and mysterious in so many delightful ways. An immediate reread.

[Reagan Kapasi · Rating 2 out of 5]

For when you want something unexpected, weird, and mournful.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t believe I get to study with this poet. Deeply moved and inspired by this collection.

[Jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Lying In” / “Mercy Later” / “As Long As They Want” / “Sex Dream” / “On a Clear Night” / “Mother Nothing” / “Desire”