Some Wild Woman by Esther Sadoff

In Some Wild Woman, Esther Sadoff  invites us to enter the mysteries of the everyday life of a parent, a family. In this brilliant collection Sadoff gives us a microscopic glimpse of the quotidian, as when her grandparents go to a McDonalds “where they unwrapped/the yellow-gold paper around their sandwiches” as if unwrapping a precious jewel. Sadoff’s poems, consistently ordinary and extraordinary from beginning to end, may help us to consider the complexities of our own mother, our own family, and our own self.

–Bill Shulz, Founder and editor of Hole in the Head review and author of Dog or Wolf

The poems in Some Wild Woman teem with images of fruits and meat, of rigorous piano chords and varying forms of water. All the while, a portrait of an enigmatic mother develops within the core of the family surrounding her. The mother from “My mother cracks watermelon into halves” is generous: “She cracks open a watermelon for me/as if I only came for its sweetness, the gem of its red heart.” The mother from “My mother wakes up fuming” is tough: “My father says she has the bite of a junkyard dog./Once she holds on, she never lets go.” The mother from “On my father’s birthday my mother cuts meat from the bone” savors life with a menacing intensity: “my mother suddenly/lifts the entire bone to her plate. I don’t know/if or how long she held the bone to her lips/to eat the remaining slivers because I’ve seen my mother/pick at so many bones.” In this sumptuous collection of poems, Sadoff lays bare an intimate collage of family moments in all their messy tension.

–Kerry Trautman, Author of To Have Hoped, Unknowable Things, and Irregulars.