Distributed for CavanKerry Press
Singing from the Deep End
An intimate collection of poems about mothers and daughters, female friendship, and memory.
Rebecca Hart Olander’s second poetry collection, Singing from the Deep End, chronicles coming of age in the '70s and '80s with a single mother, girlhood friends, the death of a dearest friend, and the poet’s own dive into motherhood. Rooted in the rocky coastline of Gloucester, Massachusetts, these poems thrum with music, mirrors, granite quarries, the Atlantic, potholder looms, feathered hair, and repurposed garments. Singing from the Deep End navigates how our ever-changing bodies can betray us and be betrayed, treading through layered griefs and surfacing into joy and reclamation. Anchored in the lives of women, this poetic mixtape is a love song to mothers, children, girlhood, and friendship.
Rebecca Hart Olander’s second poetry collection, Singing from the Deep End, chronicles coming of age in the '70s and '80s with a single mother, girlhood friends, the death of a dearest friend, and the poet’s own dive into motherhood. Rooted in the rocky coastline of Gloucester, Massachusetts, these poems thrum with music, mirrors, granite quarries, the Atlantic, potholder looms, feathered hair, and repurposed garments. Singing from the Deep End navigates how our ever-changing bodies can betray us and be betrayed, treading through layered griefs and surfacing into joy and reclamation. Anchored in the lives of women, this poetic mixtape is a love song to mothers, children, girlhood, and friendship.
Table of Contents
Cape Ann
I.
Riding Lessons
Book of Changes
Attachment
The Mirror Building
Turtle
This Bird Has Flown
Origin
Girls. I Knew. I Was.
What Heidi Knew
The Early Intimacy of Gwen and Me
Three Lies and a Truth
Unearthing and Burying My Old Friend Jennifer with a Golden Shovel
On Learning to Say No
Alita Darcy
Balance Beam
Fifteen
Ode to a Girlhood Bedroom
One Reason I Become an English Teacher
Wrecked, Off Pavilion Beach
Gloucester Music
Brackett’s Quarry
To the One Who Braved the Snake to Keep Me Safe
II. The Jerica Poems
Swim Lessons
Mass on the Mammogram
After Her Diagnosis, I Think of Italy
On the Carrer de Mallorca in Spain One Long-Ago Winter
Besieged Castle
My Toddler Godson in the Yard in May
Winter Trees
First Party After His Mother Died
Pandemic Mammogram
Maid of Honor
The Last
As Bees
Anniversary
Grief
Wildwood Cemetery
Declaration
III.
Carrying Lessons
Old Pelham Road
Hurricane Necklace
The Conception of Immaculate
Thinking About Why Sylvia Didn’t Tell the Hunter About the Nest
Writing in the Car While the Teens Battle on Game Night
To My Daughter, Departing for Indonesia
Malum
On Mothering, Mortality, and the Wankel T. rex
Offspring
Inheritance
Human Hours
Concerning the Marble on My Mother’s Kidney
First Day in Iceland with My Mother and Daughter
My Decidua
Beavers Never Want to Live a Different Life
The Mousetrap
Considering Delores
Dóttir
Telling the Bees
Notes
Acknowledgments
I.
Riding Lessons
Book of Changes
Attachment
The Mirror Building
Turtle
This Bird Has Flown
Origin
Girls. I Knew. I Was.
What Heidi Knew
The Early Intimacy of Gwen and Me
Three Lies and a Truth
Unearthing and Burying My Old Friend Jennifer with a Golden Shovel
On Learning to Say No
Alita Darcy
Balance Beam
Fifteen
Ode to a Girlhood Bedroom
One Reason I Become an English Teacher
Wrecked, Off Pavilion Beach
Gloucester Music
Brackett’s Quarry
To the One Who Braved the Snake to Keep Me Safe
II. The Jerica Poems
Swim Lessons
Mass on the Mammogram
After Her Diagnosis, I Think of Italy
On the Carrer de Mallorca in Spain One Long-Ago Winter
Besieged Castle
My Toddler Godson in the Yard in May
Winter Trees
First Party After His Mother Died
Pandemic Mammogram
Maid of Honor
The Last
As Bees
Anniversary
Grief
Wildwood Cemetery
Declaration
III.
Carrying Lessons
Old Pelham Road
Hurricane Necklace
The Conception of Immaculate
Thinking About Why Sylvia Didn’t Tell the Hunter About the Nest
Writing in the Car While the Teens Battle on Game Night
To My Daughter, Departing for Indonesia
Malum
On Mothering, Mortality, and the Wankel T. rex
Offspring
Inheritance
Human Hours
Concerning the Marble on My Mother’s Kidney
First Day in Iceland with My Mother and Daughter
My Decidua
Beavers Never Want to Live a Different Life
The Mousetrap
Considering Delores
Dóttir
Telling the Bees
Notes
Acknowledgments