Imagined Sons

In Imagined Sons Carrie Etter has written a book of vivid, heartbreaking poems on the experience of giving up a child for adoption. A prize-winning author, lecturer, critic and popular blogger, Etter imagines the possible destinies for the child and presents us with various scenarios from the tragic to the absurd. That the child's birthday is also Sept. 11th adds a layer of irony and pathos, 'What is the anniversary of loss?' - asks the narrator in one of the 'Birthmother's Catechism' poems. In Imagined Sons Carrie Etter reflects on the experience of a birthmother who gave up her son when she was seventeen. In a series of haunting, psalmlike prose poems of enormous courage and insight, she describes possible encounters with this son, now in his late teens, expressing how 'sometimes the melancholy arrives before the remembering'. The series of 'Birthmother's Catechisms' return to repeated, harrowing questions that yield different answers at different moments. This quite extraordinary book by a writer of great imagistic power and skill leaves a mark on the reader which is ineradicable. These are poems of the utmost importance. - Bernard O'Donoghue Carrie Etter's stellar new volume folds the wrenching passion of displaced motherhood into a fascinating sequence of poems. Etter writes with intelligence, imagination and style - and not a shred of sentiment. Neither a memoir nor a narrative, the book opens lyric windows to interior experiences, and it rings with psychological truths. This gifted poet defines poetry as she wrestles with ambiguity. - Molly Peacock