Publisher: Harper Perennial Page Count: 118 Year Published: 2020 Genre: Poetry
Poetry hasn’t always been my preferred genre. I have memories of reading Wordsworth and Byron in AP English classes, looking at the words, rolling them around my mouth, trying to make sense of the words. I always preferred novels.
However, somewhere in my twenties, poetry started to click for me and I found myself reaching for it. I credit Stephanie Danler, who has repeatedly said that to become a better writer she reads poetry. I started seeing What Kind of Woman all over Instagram, and I was drawn to the cover, which is stunning.
Separated into three parts, Baer’s poetry collection explores marriage, motherhood, womanhood, expectation, and happiness.
The poems are brief, and some hold a tone of defeat while others, recognizing the transitions in life, are hopeful. Baer subverts traditional notions of marriage and motherhood specifically and femininity generally. One of my favorite poems is Female Candidate, which outlines stereotypical reasons for women to become unlikable: “I like her but / aggressive tone / it’s not that she / now that I have daughters / if only she would … / show some leg / I cannot vote for the kind of woman who / has to stick up her / not my kind of girl.” The name of the collection, What Kind of Woman, is a nod to the question that underlies every poem: what kind of woman are you if there are kinds of women, which there are not.
In Ode to Desire, Baer explores what it’s like to desire after marriage and motherhood, two items that society tells us lessen female desire or make it inappropriate: “I have always been hungry; fingers dipped / in sugar, salt across my lips. Four children / have passed through my body and still here / I am, asking for your hands on my hips, / voice in my ear. For melon and honey cream. / for you to not make love to me / take me… “
I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of poems and will likely re-read it many times.
Have you read it?
Read It Like Rory 