One Month, One Poem: Dollbaby

Photo by Timur Romanov on Unsplash

I don’t know where the idea originated, but somewhere a friend of mine saw the suggestion of choosing one poem, and reading it every day for a month. I like how words go, and I especially like how poets make words go. I joined in with a few friends and chose my poem.

I let the random whim of the Poetry Foundation website find something for me. For the month of September, I am reading “My Mother’s Body” by Marge Piercy.

I thought that it would get boring after a day or two, or that I would spend lots of time taking apart things like structure, rhythm, word choice. I haven’t even noticed the structure yet. I am gobsmacked by something wonderful, terrible, or tragic in this poem every day.

I will share some impressions here, in the hopes that maybe you will try this as well. This is all part of my ongoing mission to demystify poetry, both the writing and the reading of it. (I let people in on my writing process in my Substack, Our Daily Breath.)

But, back to Marge Piercy and her amazing poem. Today, she caught my heart with just one word, “dollbaby.” Here’s the stanza:

remember me dressing you, my seventy year

old mother who was my last dollbaby,

giving you too late what your youth had wanted.