Blessing for the Unborn by Anna Lowe Weber

Anna Lowe Weber’s great gift as a poet is the startling clarity of her images and metaphors. Speaking of what it’s like to be pregnant, she says, “Trees shuddering / their leaves at once to reveal hundreds / of birds. Or just one. / Swelled in song.” The poems in Blessing for the Unborn also shudder and sing. They celebrate, grieve, get angry with, and endure the messiness of birthing and rearing children. Whatever her subject—difficulty in conceiving a second child, envy of the husband whom her daughter showers with seemingly gratuitous affection, the violence of the world into which she has brought her two children—she does not blink.
–Donald Platt, author of Tornadoesque and Man Praying

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]

“The speaker of ‘Trying to Conceive’ marvels at ‘the soft spot that pumps a slight pulse with the beat of the infant’s heart.’ Vulnerability—that of both babies and mothers—is at the center of Blessing for the Unborn. Anna Lowe Weber explores such subjects as infertility, childbirth, and post-partum intimacy. But these clinical terms don’t do justice to her ability to find beauty in even the starkest moments. Just as the fontanel offers a reminder that the child is still not ‘quite of this world,’ Weber’s lush imagery reveals mysteries that are at once ‘delicious and terrifying.’”

–Erin Murphy, author of Dislocation and Other Theories

Rating: ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]