Publishers Weekly
11/22/2021
Moore’s exquisite debut uses beekeeping and its attendant metaphors as a motif to explore childhood homes, marriage, and the birth of and raising of a child. Composed primarily of one to two-page free verse poems, the book also includes a dynamic set of haibuns (a Japanese form that joins a haiku and a prose poem) about her daughter’s girlhood, as “Morning Haibun with Tween”: “The girl can sleep now, hours and hours at a time—years since the last 2 am tiptoe down the hall to fold herself sweetly between us like a warm sheet.” Moore’s refusal to turn away from or sentimentalize hard moments is often leavened with humor, as the very titles of the poems suggest: “Labor as an Exotic Vacation” and “Postcard to My Left Axillary Lymph Nodes.” The final sentence of “Bad at Bees,” the four-page prose piece that closes the collection, provides an immediate retrospective focus: “I don’t really know what I’m doing most days. I just like to touch fear.” An homage to the power of matriarchy, Moore’s powerful collection will leave readers reflecting on the roles visible and invisible played by women. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
"Moore’s debut collection is a winner of the 2020 National Poetry Series, and it’s clear why. Using imagery of the beehive and the matriarchal queen bee, Moore contemplates childbirth, motherhood, and marriage. A quietly profound work about the inevitable cycles of life." — O, the Oprah Magazine
"Pinpointing pivotal moments, Moore looks at the love and anger between mother and daughter, as well as the way the daughter replaces the mother as the one who brings new life into the family. These highly descriptive poems evoke a dreamlike state, one that is quick-moving and evocative, temporarily erasing actual and imagined boundaries." — Library Journal
“A rare feat for any book of poems, let alone a debut, in that the lines, wrought with such deft precision and care, mark the sum total of a life richly lived and felt at the seat of poetry...These poems care, first and foremost, for what they write of and through, which is a much needed—yet increasingly rare—achievement.” — Ocean Vuong
"In her outstanding debut collection, Requeening, Amanda Moore imaginatively parallels the life of a woman in her family with the life of the queen bee in the hive. These poems take us through the sleepless nights of early parenthood, drunk with joy, through illness and recovery, through grief and fierce love. Often these poems evince a hard-earned dark humor. Just as she receives a cancer diagnosis, she writes, My 9th graders file into our room/ and I am at the whim of divine irony/...just as I have to teach a lesson/ on Odysseus’ journey to the Underworld. Always her images are precise and vivid, her understanding cogent, as when she compares mourning to Monet’s paintings: haystack, haystack, haystack...which is to say/ they are like this grief.../all the same but for the light. And when Moore describes the sand an Aunt collected from all over the world in a poem that ends, what we kept/ and what we stole, this past/ we’ve made from pilfered dust, we feel she is speaking a truth about all of our lives." — Ellen Bass, author of Indigo
the Oprah Magazine O
"Moore’s debut collection is a winner of the 2020 National Poetry Series, and it’s clear why. Using imagery of the beehive and the matriarchal queen bee, Moore contemplates childbirth, motherhood, and marriage. A quietly profound work about the inevitable cycles of life."
Ocean Vuong
A rare feat for any book of poems, let alone a debut, in that the lines, wrought with such deft precision and care, mark the sum total of a life richly lived and felt at the seat of poetry...These poems care, first and foremost, for what they write of and through, which is a much needed—yet increasingly rare—achievement.”
Ellen Bass
"In her outstanding debut collection, Requeening, Amanda Moore imaginatively parallels the life of a woman in her family with the life of the queen bee in the hive. These poems take us through the sleepless nights of early parenthood, drunk with joy, through illness and recovery, through grief and fierce love. Often these poems evince a hard-earned dark humor. Just as she receives a cancer diagnosis, she writes, My 9th graders file into our room/ and I am at the whim of divine irony/...just as I have to teach a lesson/ on Odysseus’ journey to the Underworld. Always her images are precise and vivid, her understanding cogent, as when she compares mourning to Monet’s paintings: haystack, haystack, haystack...which is to say/ they are like this grief.../all the same but for the light. And when Moore describes the sand an Aunt collected from all over the world in a poem that ends, what we kept/ and what we stole, this past/ we’ve made from pilfered dust, we feel she is speaking a truth about all of our lives."
Library Journal
09/01/2021
In an essay about her battle with cancer and her daughter's puberty, Moore says that she wants to balance her mother self with her writer self while respecting her daughter's need for privacy. She achieves this delicate balance in this collection, a National Poetry Series winner, which covers similar territory. In these poems, Moore posits the metaphor of a beehive and the process of requeening the hive as a way to focus on the relationship between mother and daughter. Set mostly in the past, the collection's plot line ranges from labor to birth and breastfeeding to childhood and adolescence, referencing the grandmother, the mother's past, places she lived, items she possessed, her illness, and chemotherapy. Moore's formal explorations include and sonnets, along with several haibun, a Japanese form developed by Basho (1644–1694). Moore's haibun, which combine prose poetry with haiku, make up the penultimate (and best) section of the book. Pinpointing pivotal moments, Moore looks at the love and anger between mother and daughter, as well as the way the daughter replaces the mother as the one who brings new life into the family. VERDICT These highly descriptive poems evoke a dreamlike state, one that is quick-moving and evocative, temporarily erasing actual and imagined boundaries.—C. Diane Scharper, Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, MD
