A few days ago I put several exclamation points in an IM conversation I was having with Karen.

The mail's here!!! I typed. I got a book!!!

The book was from Andrea Buchanan's publisher, a medium-weight anthology straight from the (web) pages of Literary Mama. Subtitled "Reading for the Maternally Inclined," the book is a celebration of writing by and about motherhood.

As an anthology born of a web site born of women who were struggling to be published elsewhere, the book has a bit of an amateur feel to it. I'm only about 1/4 of the way into the book (long long bath with this book = happy happy mama) but already some of the pieces strike me as rushed, loosely edited.

That said, others veritably sang to me. I think motherhood is best described through the medium of poetry, and when I go to a blessing way or baby shower, I'm more likely to bring along a book of Sharon Olds' poetry than "What to Expect During Your Baby's First Year!" or some such other heavily capitalized-and-exclamation-marked book.

Poetry like this is what my heart yearns for, it's where I aspire to someday be.

Sarah Pinto's pregnancy poem, "Third Month," is now the apex of all pregnancy poems for me. She writes,

I had read that in the highlands of a certain island
a child is not made by connecting it to a world of named others,
but by separating it, stretching it away
tediously
from all and all and all that is.
But I wonder now if before the child can be

made not to merge with the slippery world
the world must coagulate,
all that is sticky and moist and
sharp and sugary and soft and loud and persistent
must first crash through the well-maintained boundaries of
someone already made.

It's both eloquently written and entirely fresh thinking, utterly beautiful stuff.

Some pieces echo other mother writing I've read in pregnancy anthologies or similar groups of essays; others are entirely new, infused with that "edgy" voice of the internet and yet not hostile or uncomfortable like The Bitch in the House. I'll keep reading, and you should, too.

[It is worth mentioning, here, that since I write for a blog, I too, am loosely edited, so I am indeed the pot calling the kettle black.]