A Poem Is Full of Meat: Dorothea Lasky on Mother

Dorothea Lasky, a versatile poet, has produced a collection of poems titled “Mother,” which is darker and more unsettling than her previous works. The poems are filled with darker tones such as blues, grays, browns, and blacks, with brighter colors like red and pink evoking horror and death. Lasky’s use of direct address in the poems is reminiscent of epistolary poetry, creating an immediate and intensely personal connection between the reader and the speaker.

Many of the poems in the collection are dedicated to the mother figure, either inspired by Lasky’s own mother or by other iconic mothers such as Bernadette Mayer. The mother in Lasky’s poems embodies power, excitement, and a line of influence, providing a moral compass for the speaker in various situations.