Publisher's Synopsis
A Certain Ache: Poems in Women's Voices is a double boon, because the notes in the book are, by themselves, a treasure of facts about well-known women and women we would do well to know. Their voices are here, rendered in excellent detail, in language groomed and thoughtful, with skill and the kind of attention they deserve. My current favorite is the poem in the voice of Mileva, the scientist who married Albert Einstein. I recommend this book most heartily!
-Marjorie Saiser, author of Learning to SwimIn A Certain Ache, Bonnie Wehle amplifies a chorus of women's voices, revealing a shared daring and desperation in the interior lives of artists, scientists, explorers, and those without fame. Wehle's speakers transmute their griefs into art and discovery, finding that what they make can hold, but not undo, loss. Wehle's verse illuminates these women as they confront "the distortion of spacetime, / our laundry on the line," persisting through the commonplace and the transcendent alike. "Because / must," one speaker gasps out amid trials; without denying suffering, Wehle proclaims these women's drive to create and to endure.-Julie Swarstad Johnson, author of Pennsylvania Furnace
In these poems, Bonnie Wehle has done one of the most powerful things poems can do: allow us to spend time with the dead. In doing so, she has resurrected something precious: the voices of women who challenged what was possible during their brief lives. These poems are a record of what we must not forget-the human dimensions of their struggle, the beauty of their boldness, and above all, how they manifest a singular, enduring belief.-Tyler Meier, Executive Director, University of Arizona Poetry Center
