Charlotte F. Otten

I'm currently pregnant, have given birth once before, am a pregnancy/birth/parenting blogger and scholar, and am such an enthusiastic reader that I have a PhD in English literature (as does the editor of this volume). So, I think I'm pretty firmly a part of the target audience. But, I mean, come on--the cover features muted-pastel flowers and a ripe piece of fruit, along with a reference to "the miracle of life." While that's not the poets' or the editor's fault, it lines up pretty well with show more what's inside.

I did find about 20 gems amongst the nearly 200 poems presented here. Most of the others felt obvious and/or schmaltzy to me.

A structural complaint: the final chapter includes poems about both miscarriage/stillbirth and abortion. For people who have dealt with or are dealing with the loss of a wanted pregnancy, this organization seems unhelpful at best. It also conflates the emotional experiences of miscarriage and abortion as both inherently tragic 'losses,' a structural conflation further underscored by the editor's selection of poems that touch on abortion (which strike me as surprisingly consistently morose--I don't know what was available, but there are definitely some odd patterns in the poems that show up here). show less

With very little, if any original writing, this anthology reads more like a hardbound coursepack than a study. This may have had some value in 1986, but the same work could be accomplished now with a decent website, which, moreover, could ask advanced students to provide their own translation of the Walter Scott-meets-Malory-meets-Joseph Smith archaized translation of the Latin Arthur and Gorlagon. If ever a translation needed to be updated, this is it.

Rating: 3.5 of 5

Status updates -

5/29/2012, page 11: Slow progress only because fiction TBR pile keeps calling my name.

6/11/2012, page 53: Medical cases and diagnoses = drugs seem to be primary treatment and "cure." How common lycanthropes were in the past and how often Satan was blamed.

6/12/2012, page 336: Detailed collection of cases, reports and essays. Enjoyed Otten's summaries at the beginning of each section. Particularly interesting were Section IV - Critical Essays and Section V - show more Myths and Legends. Would like to buy a copy of this one.

6/12/2012, page 337: If I could break out my highlighter here's one I would:

"As a long line of thinkers from Aristotle to Sir Philip Sidney have observed, history is tied 'to the particular truth of things, and not to the general reason of things' (Sidney, The Defence of Poesie). Because myth transcends historical events, it can give penetrating insights into all human life... (p. 225)." show less

One of Virago's many themed poetry collections, this one is not simply filled with women's experience of birth but also includes the male perspective, which is refreshing!