Fertility Rites by Becki Blanton McGee

“Fertility Rites fearlessly confronts the yearning, anger, and grief of infertility. These poems distill that darkness into a ‘fine pain fluttering… like silk’ and offer nature as confirmation of the human capacity for healing and resilience. Beneath the force of McGee’s exacting language, richly mythic allusions, and carefully-wrought metaphors, motherhood’s most terrible loss is shined into something beautiful.”
–Julie Hensley, The Language of Horses

“Fertility Rites chronicles an emotional odyssey that draws on mythology and the beauty of the Kentucky countryside to communicate the pain of infertility and miscarriage. By turns lyrical and raw, McGee manages to compel the reader to embrace the journey. Her powerful words will elicit understanding from the ignorant and a pang of appreciative consonance from women who have experienced the same ache.”
–Lisa Karon Richardson, The Magistrate’s Folly

“McGee’s hauntingly beautiful Fertility Rites is a difficult journey, one of longing, answered prayers, and heartbreak. From the first poem, your heart and attention are captured, leaving you anxious to turn the page, to confront ‘all the obstacles, all the things that can go wrong.’ It is one woman’s catharsis, ‘how I miss our duet’; the duality of spring and winter, a place of prayer and hope, breath held happiness, ‘the pain is near and real’. The poet looks to nature to survive, her poems bloom on the page.”

–Eric Scott Sutherland, incommunicado

Rating: *****  [5 of 5 Stars!]