Review by Tessara Dudley
Singing from the Deep End is a powerful book of poetry about motherhood and life cycles. It is divided into three sections, each focused on the author’s relationships with the four people to whom the book is dedicated: her mother, a dear friend who passed on in 2020, and Hart Olander’s two children.
In the first section, the poems reflect on the love, resentment, confusion, and yearning a daughter can feel for a mother, especially a single mother. “Our mother lived as she wanted her life to be. Did that teach me // to be an optimist? A liar? A poet? I learned the alchemy / of mothers, turning base metals into gold” (9). She recalls how cool she found her mother smoking pot and singing Fleetwood Mac in the backyard with other adults, and how embarrassed she felt during visits with her own friend where she encountered a more elegant stay-at-home mom. Other poems address the coercive actions of boys and men from which the speaker’s mother did not protect her, explore the ways teenage girls can support and destroy each other in turn, and acknowledge how a teenager learns to find herself, how she must grow beyond relying on her mother.
The next section is a heartfelt tribute to Jerica, a friend lost to cancer. The poems here show the devastation of learning about her friend’s diagnosis, the first birthday Jerica’s son celebrates after her passing, and the grief of the last moments they spent together. In “Pandemic Mammogram,” the speaker relates the anxiety and pain of getting this routine medical procedure in the wake of her loss: “they’d made me say / my birthday out loud, / a milestone I get to keep reaching” (48). This section concludes by acknowledging how the speaker was fundamentally changed by this long friendship and by its painful end.
The final section reveals the author’s own experience of motherhood, having learned the lessons of childhood and teenage years, seen a beloved friend pass and leave her family behind, and watched her own children grow to adulthood. In “Malum,” the speaker both teaches and learns from her son, reflecting on the subtle bittersweetness of watching your child grow up and make their own way. In “First Day in Iceland with My Mother and Daughter,” the speaker watches the Northern Lights and enjoys the togetherness of three generations: “Beside my mother, who I grew inside, / and my daughter, who grew inside me, my fists loosened / in my pockets. I couldn’t tell you what they’d held” (76). In this last section, the speaker recalls the simplicity of her toddler daughter’s joy at playtime, helps her son move into a college dorm, and goes on hikes with family members. In the end, the speaker must learn to let go of what she’s held: of childish grudges and disappointments; of clothes her children have long since outgrown; of her mother’s wedding veil and her own wedding dress; and of her children, who are now adults and must make their own way in the world. The book leaves readers with a fitting benediction: “Let me let go when I remain wedded to the past” (81).
In this book, Hart Olander is deeply, contemplatively concerned with cycles: of life and death, of growing and birthing, of seasons and time. These are deeply touching poems with strong imagery and lyrical turns of phrase. There are a few prose poems, and a golden shovel that was particularly impactful, but the majority of poems are in couplets, and many have quite long lines. The form is unobtrusive; the most important point is always the content: exploring motherhood and the cyclical nature of life. It is a broadly relatable and sincere work that will resonate with many.
Singing from the Deep End is the second poetry book by Rebecca Hart Olander, who is the editor and director of Perugia Press, a non-profit feminist press. Winner of the Women’s National Book Association Poetry Award, Rebecca has taught poetry at several colleges and Universities. Her first book, Uncertain Acrobats, was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award in Poetry and the Massachusetts Book Award. She is based in Western Massachusetts.
Singing from the Deep End by Rebecca Hart Olander
CavanKerry Press, 2026, 112 pages, $18.00 [paper]
ISBN 9781960327178
Tessara Dudley is the author of Fallen/Forever Rising. Their poetry has appeared in journals such as Sun Star Review, Wordgathering, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and Words Dance, and in anthologies published by Minerva Rising, Zoetic Press, Damaged Goods Press, and Wingless Dreamer, among others. They share poems, writing resources, and book reviews at http://tessaradudley.substack.com