{"product_id":"a-daughters-work-is-heartless-caledonia-kearns-9781635349856","title":"A Daughter's Work Is Heartless by Nature","description":"\u003cp\u003eA brave and evocative meditation on motherlove, which considers how we rebuild ourselves after loss.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCaledonia Kearns' first collection of poems, published at 49, is an attempt to meet Muriel Rukeyser's challenge, \"What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?\/The world would split open\". Kearns' poems tell the story of an ordinary woman raising a daughter as a second-generation single mother, as she recreates herself after marriage, negotiates lovers lost and found, and navigates the quotidian.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom Kearns' childhood in Dorchester, Massachusetts (\"the streets of that other city\/were so quiet it was always a lonely dark\") to her daughter's childhood during the first wave of gentrification in Brooklyn (\"This is Brooklyn now.\/ The antenna factories across the street are long gone\"), it is a deeply urban story.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTold in four parts, Kearns begins--\"Coming from where I do\/there was no choice but to bet on the filly.\" She moves on to explore the reconstruction of the self after the end of a marriage and the search for connection. The collection ends with a reckoning--her daughter's depression and hospitalization before she leaves for college: \"I don't want to say\/sometimes my daughter wants to die\/but if I don't there's no saving her\/sometimes my daughter wants to die.\" Along the way her daughter's voice infuses the occasional commentary: \"How you think\/you fucked me up\/is not how\/you fucked me up.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eClear-eyed and persistent, the virtue of \"A Daughter's Work Is Heartless by Nature\" is its straightforward, accessible lyric, its relentless search for beauty in the day-to-day.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Caledonia Kearns\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1635349850\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781635349856\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Finishing Line Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 08\/08\/2019\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 90\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.32lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.22d","brand":"Caledonia Kearns","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43941581291775,"sku":"9781635349856","price":19.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/products\/img_7294dbe6-761b-4803-bf90-0ea1ce367dc4.jpg?v=1681453751","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/a-daughters-work-is-heartless-caledonia-kearns-9781635349856","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}