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Reviewed by Dorsía Smith Silva
Renee Norman’s poems in True
Confessions cover a range of experience, from her complex relationship with
her mother to the daily struggles of womanhood. Her poems are
bound together by the various experiences of women as daughters,
mothers, grandmothers, and poets. The end result is a fresh,
appealing collection that balances love, nostalgia, humour, fear,
and anger.
Norman opens the first section, “This is How It Begins,” with “Chop.” The
poem describes a parenting role-reversal, in which the speaker
affectionately helps her mother undress like she does her “youngest
child / when her head is stuck.” The tone quickly changes
in “Repairing Damage” when the daughter starts to “break
/ and fight back” with her mother for lecturing her “children
/ who should have known better.” Mother-daughter tension
also resonates in “Mother’s Madness,” as the
daughter once again disapproves of her mother’s commands
to her children: “is this what you want them to remember?
/ stop running up and down the stairs / stop teasing your sister.” Norman
returns to the intimate bond between mothers and daughters in “For
Sara at Twelve.” The mother here tenderly recognizes her
connection to her daughter: “the same knots tangle / your
hair and mine / we both squint through / glasses spotted with breath.” These
moving poems best illustrate the profound emotions shared by mothers
and daughters.
In the second and third sections, “If I Call Myself” and “When
Geese Fly,” Norman reflects upon the strength of women and
the domestic responsibilities of mothers. With “On the Tongue,” she
describes how women come together to share pain: “when Nicaraguan
poet Daisy Zamora recites / a poem about her mother / when mature
students read personal narratives aloud / one mother’s lost
child is each particular sadness.” In the poem “In
the Bathroom Thou Salt Eat Stones,” Zamora reappears as a
symbol of brave women who fearlessly “eat stones” while
others prefer the easy life of eating “bonbons.” Also
of note are the poems “Woman Flees,” “The Queen
of Between,” and the choreo-styled “Sex Secretaries
in Search of a Poet” which examine the constant struggle
of mothers working outside and inside the home to find time for
themselves.
In the final section, “Giving Thanks,” Norman returns
to her role as a daughter—to both mother and father—nd
granddaughter. Although these poems evoke the speaker’s warmth
for her family, they border on trite sentimentality. Lines such
as “for weeks I have been talking to my father / through
my mother / inserting care and concern in the phone lines / passing
by the heart” (“My Father, Driving”) lack the
emotional poignancy found in some of the poems in the earlier sections.
Nonetheless, Norman’s collection is a pleasure to read and
paints a wide landscape of the lives of women.
Published in the Journal of the
Association for Research on Mothering 9 (1) (Spring/Summer 2007). Reprinted with permission.
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