Daughter by Maureen Eppstein

Maureen Eppstein’s Daughter is an elegy, a cradle-song, and a manifesto for the young woman she was and stillborn daughter she birthed amid the casual misogyny and medical carelessness of the times. Long held as a painful, shameful secret, these poems are an act of release and healing, a descent into the underworld, and a rebirth into air. It will give solace and companionship to the myriad women who have suffered similar losses and never spoken of them, and remain as a testament of a mother’s love.

–Alison Luterman, author of In the Time of Great Fires

From the opening lines of “Hearts and Flowers” through last sestina, “Remnants,” Maureen Eppstein wraps us in an elegiac language both lyrical and haunting, and with a masterful hand she leads us to experience first-hand loss, anger, grief, and finally the joy of healing.  We emerge from this stunning journey with a new appreciation for the world that can only come from the crevices of pain felt deeply by a mother who has lost a child. In the final pages she confesses to a shared sisterhood, When finally I named her, I learned to mourn, and her victory is our shared triumph when she declares I am the valley and mountain, the world and stardust from whence it came. 

 —Elizabeth Kirkpatrick Vrenios, author of Concerto for an Empty Frame