Another Life

Another Life is a collection of poems that circle motherhood and all it entails, its hopes and its horrors. It's about the life chosen and the life left unlived. Frances Klein takes the reader on a journey through both the pain and the pleasure in the paths followed. Each poem carries the reader a little further forward but doesn't stop them from looking back and wondering What if? These poems explore memory and history and future and dreams, they delve into desire in all its forms and ask questions that linger long after you've read them. Another Life allows the reader to wonder at all that could have been while remaining grateful for all that is.

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In Another Life, Frances Klein reminds us that "being alive on this planet / means acknowledging that all things / were once something else." The world that she builds in these poems will speak to any woman who has experienced the cyclical longing, vulnerability & grief of infertility, miscarriage & motherhood. With precision & honest, Frances invites us into these experiences which feel both personal & universal-& ultimately, infinitely human.

~ Joan Kwon Glass, author of Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms

In Another Life, Frances Klein's poems wander through landscapes of loss with a sharp humor and a keen love for the world, a world where "by no means should the poem simply end/by refusing to change its bra/and taking the whole sleeve/of Oreos to bed,/but it will anyway." Another Life shines, reminding us that "What we have built here is spiderweb fragile,/the wind plucking each tethering thread."

~ Donna Vorreyer, author of To Everything There Is

In Another Life, Klein cleverly examines the American mundane toil-the alienation that is contemporary woman/motherhood-all with a precision of language, line and form, and a charming voice and aesthetic. I highly recommend this poignant, exquisite collection, not only for its intelligence but its humanity as well.

~ Jose Hernandez Diaz, author of Bad Mexican, Bad Mexican