Ascent of the Mothers
Ascent of the Mothers
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Noelle Kocot’s ninth collection, Ascent of the Mothers, is a sagacious testament to the ways in which poetry can shape personhood. “I am nothing” they write, “Or else I have made myself / Too big for words.” The scope of this book is marked by Kocot’s psychic journey punctuated by a near-fatal car crash, which elicited a new understanding of their spirituality and gender nonconforming identity. Generous, self-aware, and resilient, Ascent of the Mothers is a treasure to behold and be shared.
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These poems catalyze the reader to take pause and contemplate the sorrow and wonder of being human.
Publishers WeeklyKocot’s is a quintessential poetry of ambivalence, a quality absent from less-nuanced poetry that revels in strong opinions—when more often, in life, we don’t quite know how to take things, “staying up nights” “For no particular reason”...Kocot powerfully reminds us that that experience is riddled with the ordinary, the arbitrary, the anarchic, and the absurd, and that to value it we must acknowledge this or fail in our understanding.
In this book, the mothers are, perceivably, Kocot’s own and themself, or rather, all of our selves, the work of being a whole and multiple selves in one, watching over them, carrying them and releasing them to their own journeys. And isn’t that the work of being alive?
Angela Ball, Best American Poetry
Elizabeth Zuba, Heavy Feather Review
Publication: November 2023
ISBN# 9781950268870 (5 x 8, 64pp, paperback)
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