World of Made and Unmade

by Jane Mead

Overview

On the National Book Award Longlist for Poetry 2016

"World of Made and Unmade is a deep blue yarn of very fine thread. We know much of poetry ever was and ever shall be elegiac. Jane Mead’s poem could be neither more literal nor nearer the verge of appearing a little too perfect for this world. As the laundry room floods and the grape harvest gets done; as Michoacan waits for another time, her beautiful, practical mother is dying. Ashes are scattered in the pecan groves of her own Rincon, her own corner of the world, and the poet, in elementary script, draws a sustaining record of the only feeling worth the struggle, and she cannot, will not, does not fuck it up." —C.D. Wright

Jane Mead's fifth collection candidly and openly explores the long process that is death. These resonant poems discover what it means to live, die, and come home again. We're drawn in by sorrow and grief, but also the joys of celebrating a long life and how simple it is to find laughter and light in the quietest and darkest of moments.

…
This year I have disappeared
from the harvest routine—

the pickers throwing their trays
under the vines, grape hooks
flying, the heavy bunches flying—

pickers running to the running tractors
with trays held high above their heads
and the arc of dark fruit

falling heavily into the half-ton bins.

The hornets swarming in the diesel-filled air.

Jane Mead is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently MONEY MONEY MONEY / WATER WATER WATER (2014). Her poems appear regularly in journals and anthologies, and she's the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, and a Lannan Foundation Completion Grant. She teaches at the low-residency MFA program at Drew Universityand farms in Northern California.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938584329
Publisher:	Alice James Books
Publication date:	09/13/2016
Pages:	100
Product dimensions:	6.75(w) x 8.75(h) x (d)

About the Author

Jane Mead is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently MONEY MONEY MONEY / WATER WATER WATER (Alice James, 2014). Her poems appear regularly in journals and anthologies, and she’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, and a Lannan Foundation Completion Grant. She teaches at the low residency MFA program at Drew Universityand farms in Northern California.

Table of Contents

1

The third time my mother fell 3

Outside her window the trees 3

I bring her coffee and a bun 4

Well, let's see, my mother begins, LVS 5

In the hills above Rincon 5

The United States of America 6

And when there was nothing left 7

With the mediocre portraits 8

Remember how you wouldn't give up 9

And with her impeccable posture 10

2

We are lying in the big bed 13

Behind the filing cabinet 14

In animal darkness, before 15

I bring breakfast, balancing the tray 16

Hospice wants to interview the patient 17

Turns out Leo is one lying 18

Somewhere in New Mexico 19

The family inundates 20

How will you spend your courage 21

The tumor on my mother's liver 22

My mother says 22

3

The finest strand of deep blue yarn 25

4

This year I have disappeared 29

The hornets swarm in the diesel-filled air 30

How will you spend your courage 31

From my mother's cabin I hear them- 32

Mexico is a snake eating 33

When this is all over 33

My mother's curled up on the big bed- 34

I want to press my body 34

The mouse behind the filing cabinet 35

5

In my father's big bed 39

In my father's lab the aisles were narrow 40

In my dream my mother comes with me 41

Yes dear-I would like some wine 42

-Would you like to go to sleep now? 42

Is that MY black dog- 43

We are sitting on the side of the bed 44

My mother takes my two hands 44

Rain, and the grape sugars 45

Passing back to the house 46

At night I go for a personal best: 47

The finest strand of deep blue yarn- 48

6

My mother's every exhale is 51

On the phone, my brother Whit 51

+ /- 3 a.m 52

So we measure the morphine carefully 53

(My mother's every exhale is 53

Ben! Oh, Ben 54

Now my mother's every exhale 55

I myself do what I do best: 55

Just after seven we turned her 56

The life falls shut 56

7

The day after my mother died 59

She died on her 84th birthday 60

-The never the over the void 60

Silvia asks whether I ever feel 61

Her ashes blow off- 62

Rincon, where the Rio Grande turns 63

And the bit about the answer 64

Because elsewhere in this valley 64

In the phone photograph 65

Editorial Reviews

07/18/2016
Changing gears in her elegiac fifth collection, Mead (Money Money Money | Water Water Water) explores parental mortality against the backdrop of a New Mexico landscape that is tied to the author’s heritage and under threat socially and ecologically. Mead grapples with a complicated mother-daughter relationship in unswerving terms, refusing to shirk responsibilities to the surrounding world, in particular the local grape harvest and the issues of migrant workers along the U.S.-Mexico border. Her shifts and movements often occur in conjunction with agricultural cycles: “Rain, and the grape-sugars/ are dropping.// The phone has gone out.” Said shifts and cycles, in turn, are frequently fashioned from actual representations of harvests, floods, and other natural forces frequently evoked by other poets on a symbolic level. As a result, Mead’s earthiness sometimes morphs into otherworldliness. Despite the protracted, harrowing process, Mead rejects self-pity: “The day after my mother died/ we finished the grape harvest.” Incorporated archival documents such as ledgers, photos, and drawings lend a stark palpability to the work. This resolute examination of death holds surprising room for an “emergency sense of humor.” In addressing the relationship of mortality to ideas of resolution, celebration, and homecoming, Mead asks, “How will you spend your courage?” Photos & illus. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

08/01/2016
"How will you spend/ your courage, how// will you spend your life?" Mead (Money Money Money|Water Water Water) addresses that question repeatedly as she considers the long season of her mother's dying. In untitled poems connected like the strands of a "deep blue yarn," Mead propels readers forward, using plain language that's elegant in its simplicity yet compelling and heartbreaking. Even as she confronts grief and loss, the poet highlights the overriding theme of courage. "Saying you want to die/ is one thing …/ but dying is quite another," she proclaims, further suggesting that love carries us through the process of death as we do what we must to ease the transition for loved ones, and live our lives in honor of them. With its ever-changing cycles of birth and rebirth, nature shows us that life continues, and it indeed provides comfort; perhaps for Mead, tending the vineyards (begun by her grandfather) and her mother's pecan trees is a way of honoring her mother. In the end, finally, it is winter: "The trees … are losing/ their leaves. The pecans// pop out of their casings—/ready for their winter harvest." VERDICT This accessible work will appeal to a wide range of readers.—Karla Huston, Appleton, WI

Library Journal