Living with the Spare On by Kimberly Reiss

Kimberly Reiss‘s Living with the Spare On is a poignant meditation on duty and desire, exhaustion and transcendence. With wry tenderness, Reiss finds poetry in the routines of daily life—the quiet rebellions, the unnoticed triumphs, the art of holding together while unraveling. A profound reminder that even when depleted, we are still becoming, still exquisitely alive.

–Amanda Stern, Little Panic: Dispatches from an Anxious Life

To read the poetry of Kimberly Reiss is to be ushered inside the mind of an extraordinarily curious and keenly observant woman. Living with the Spare On gives us the opportunity to indulge in the guilty pleasure of eavesdropping on the agile wanderings of her private thoughts, her technicolor feelings, her time-traveling memories, her go-to-the-end-of-the-earth ruminations and her wordplay as she goes about her day; eating breakfast, tending to her rambunctious child, napping, vacuuming, coming apart and coming back together again.

–Josh Gosfield, The Art of Doing, and upcoming ART and YOU

Kimberly Reiss‘ Living with the Spare On evokes a timeless wrestling between motherhood and selfhood, domestic comfort and despair and the never-ending search for the meaning of home. Though I imbibed these treasures in one delicious sitting, this is a thought-provoking collection that asks to be read again and again.

–Joanna Hershon, St. Ivo