Every poet is so different—their language and their grammars so uniquely their own—that while there are usually threads connecting them to others, what attracts a reader to a particular poet’s book is a response as sui generis as the poet’s to the world.

I have in front of me two collections which should shake the foundations of what a person thinks they know about conception, child loss, and pregnancy—but also women’s history, women’s medicine, women’s narratives; what lore survives the dominancy of patriarchy