girl woman wife mother
poems by Talya Jankovits
girl woman wife mother is an exploration of the complexities and nuances of the emotional and physical metamorphoses of a woman.
The beauty of being a woman is found in the intricate and sometimes mundane details of the human experience and the varying demands of societal and personal pressures. Within the inhabitation of all these blurred roles is a beautiful chaos. This collection of poems tracks the effects of such roles, internal and external, homing in on the vulnerabilities of femininity and embracing them with unfiltered honesty.
Praise
These poems speak to each word in the title, honestly, beautifully, and with raw, deep love. In Talya’s poem, ‘My Stomach’...after childbirth—“I want to love this/ mound of flesh/like I love you.” And as she writes in the Dedications—“There is much beauty in the chaos of being all things at once.”
Alma Luz Villanueva
author of Gracias
Talya Jankovits’ fierce, sexy, tender, searching poems chart the serpentine course of moving through life in a female body, and all its attendant frustrations and perils and sweetness and deep pleasures. These poems and their speaker stretch outside their own lines, break their own silences, step toward self-trust, self-love. As much as this book explores being girl woman wife mother, it also explores being a writer, and Talya Jankovits is a glorious one indeed. I’m grateful for this generous collection and eagerly await future books from this talented author.
Gayle Brandeis
PEN/Bellwether Prize-winning writer and author of Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Loss
In girl woman wife mother, Talya Jankovits welcomes the reader into her world, into her “garden of tiny heartbeats,” with brazen tenderness. Her poetry reveals her perspective with an unflinching bravery. This debut poetry collection is cause for celebration.
Rachel Kann
Fulbright Scholar and author of How to Bless the New Moon