Psalms of Unknowing: Poems

By Heather Lanier

"A powerful poetic reckoning with motherhood and religion." —Kirkus Reviews

“Poignant. Provocative. Downright hilarious. Heather Lanier is an incendiary psalmist and we love her for it.”  —Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved and Duke University professor 

How do we reconcile our love with our grief? Seek peace in a violent world? Find compassion for our rightwing neighbors? Psalms of Unknowing challenges the patriarchy with an eye on contemporary issues such as gun violence, household divisions of labor, and parenting in an uncertain world.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing
• Release date: Sep 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781958972076

Heather Lanier

Heather Lanier is the author of two award-winning poetry chapbooks along with the memoir, Raising a Rare Girl, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Malcolm Gladwell Next Big Idea Book Nominee. She writes at the intersections of spirituality, motherhood, and feminism, and her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The Sun, TIME, Poets & Writers Magazine, Longreads, and elsewhere. Her essays have twice been noted in The Best American Essays Series, and her TED Talk, “‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ are Incomplete Stories We Tell Ourselves,” has been viewed nearly three million times. She works as an Assistant Professor of creative writing at Rowan University, attends an Episcopal church and practices daily contemplative meditation.

Book preview

9781958972069_FC.jpg

Praise for

Psalms of Unknowing

This body of poems straddles the delicate creation of new life and the unpredictability of death. The author begins with a poem about pumping breast milk at work (‘Pumping Milk’). As she stands topless in the office, she contemplates the strange dichotomy of her identity: ‘half of me is made / for spring break gone primal, / the other half / will write a memo. / Is this what it means / to be a mother? The self, split.’ . . . Lanier’s metaphors are masterful. ’ . . . Her descriptions are visceral and unique. . . . Lanier’s truth telling is bold and vulnerable. . . . A powerful poetic reckoning with motherhood and religion. —Kirkus Reviews

Poignant. Provocative. Downright hilarious. Heather Lanier is an incendiary psalmist and we love her for it. —Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved and Duke University professor

"Heather Lanier’s Psalms of Unknowing riveted and rattled me, bringing me ultimately toward a complex and unsettled solace. With candor and with canniness, Lanier excavates and eviscerates pat aphorisms and knee-jerk positivity, offering instead a deeply considered engagement with mothering, marriage, spirituality, the medical establishment, and beyond. Lanier writes with formal dexterity and winking lyricism, against misogyny and against ableism, and toward a world worthy of the faithful, the faithless, and everyone in between." —Natalie Shapero, author of Popular Longing

"When a book begins ‘topless at the office/like a scandal,’ you know the poems it contains will push against easy or sweet received narratives about what it means to be a mother and a person of faith. (She’s ‘Pumping Milk,’ the poem’s title clarifies!) These poems reinvent the trinity, beginning with ‘the name of the mother,’ and reimagine the Virgin Mary as a present-day pregnant woman scolded by What to Expect into counting protein grams and giving up tuna. By turns tender and sharply observant, Psalms of Unknowing calls us to consider the fragility of the body, the afterlife of grief, and the consolation afforded by love." —Nancy Reddy, author of Pocket Universe

Psalms of Unknowing: Poems Copyright © 2023 by Heather Lanier

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without the consent of the publisher except in critical articles or reviews. Contact the publisher for information.

Paperback ISBN 978-1-958972-06-9

eBook ISBN 978-1-958972-07-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lanier, Heather Kirn, author.

Title: Psalms of unknowing : poems / Heather Lanier.

Description: Rhinebeck, New York : Monkfish Book Publishing Company, [2023]

Identifiers: LCCN 2023007050 (print) | LCCN 2023007051 (ebook) | ISBN

9781958972069 (Paperback) | ISBN 9781958972076 (eBook)

Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS3612.A5854 P73 2023 (print) | LCC PS3612.A5854

(ebook) | DDC 811/.6--dc23/eng/20230308

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023007050

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023007051

Book and cover design by Colin Rolfe

Cover art: Hope II (1907-1908) by Gustav Klimt

Monkfish Book Publishing Company

22 East Market Street, Suite 304

Rhinebeck, New York 12572

[phone]

monkfishpublishing.com

Contents

Pumping Milk

I.

In the Name of the Mother…

Free Bible in Your Own Language

Father Jim Shows Me Twelve Jesuses

Bed Rest

Ode To Seven