Nine years after the stunning debut of her critically acclaimed poetry collection A Working Girl Canβt Win, which chronicled the progress and predicaments of a young woman, Deborah Garrison now moves into another stage of adulthoodβstarting a family and saying good-bye to a more carefree self.
In The Second Child, Garrison explores every facet of motherhoodβthe ambivalence, the trepidation, and the joy (βSharp bliss in proximity to the roundness, / The globe already set aspin, particular / Of a whole new lifeβ)β and comes to terms with the seismic shift in her outlook and in the world around her. She lays out her post-9/11 fears as she commutes daily to the city, continues to seek passion in her marriage, and wrestles with her feelings about faith and the mysterious gift of happiness.
Sometimes sensual, sometimes succinct, always candid, The Second Child is a meditation on the extraordinariness resident in the everydayβnursing babies, missing the past, knowing when to lead a child and knowing when to let go. With a voice sound and wise, Garrison examines a life fully lived.
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