The Sum of Two Mothers

Sometimes the most complicated stories of our lives can be put into the shortest of forms. In this small book of poems Dennis Etzel Jr. recounts a fragmented chronology from his childhood to his fatherhood. Living their lives with love and integrity, Etzel’s two mothers raised him together despite the status quo resistance they daily faced in Topeka, KS. Now the father of sons, Etzel’s poems draw as much from his own memories as they do from the larger social context of marriage equality — and in bridging that gap between the personal and the political with lyrical grace and political conviction, Sum of Two Mothers is a riveting little book that is as much about growing up with two mothers, as it is about becoming a father who is raising his sons with a more inclusive — but equally protected — model of the world.

–Kristin Prevallet, I Afterlife, Essay in Mourning Time

“This collection of poems range from recollections of childhood to marital woes, all with power and poise. Some of the poems in this collection, like “centering” and “Gravewatchers,” seem to falter a bit in the trickery they employ. Batts is at her best when the poems are less intricately wrought, and so the poems that play with language and form tend, to this eye, to work at cross purposes to the personal connection she has with the events and emotions of the poems. However, when Batts eschews these embellishments, and engages in Wordsworth’s “powerful emotion recollected in tranquility” she is undeniably accomplished. Poems like “What You Will Remember” and “Jennifer in Five Acts” recall a past that is chronologically removed, but still salient and powerful. They are past, but very much still present; personal, but also very universal.”

~ C. Sabatelli

I love this book, and I wanted to say that first, “in danger / of being / engendered”. These are the beautiful and percipient poems Minnie Bruce Pratt’s son could have written if the cops hadn’t ripped him from the arms of his two mothers. Crime Against Nature, meet The Sum of Two Mothers, it’s time we all meet up over here where Dennis Etzel Jr. is making the magic happen for us! You will hear in him with me the voice of a poet we have been waiting to hear, and glad we finally found him!

–CA Conrad, A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New (Soma)tics

There is always the kid who refuses to dissect the dead pig in science class. Or the kid who `liberates’ the frogs from their glass cubes to the chagrin of the teacher and the glee of the students. And then there is Dennis Etzel Jr., who gives the command, `make shining rescues’ while acknowledging the impossibility of this act. Yet, any color is possible in the light these poems throw. An orange that only exists in the kiss between two mothers. The color of witnessing. The color of sliding out of childhood into snowy legalities. Etzel is a color-sharpener. These poems will graze you with the glare of gendered equations. They measure the sum of omission. They are the prism’s reach and rescue.

–Julia Cohen, Collateral Light

Rarely does a poem do as much in as few words as Dennis Etzel Jr.’s Sum of Two Mothers. It is a complete mini-autobiography in verse — but one that leaves ample room for the reader’s imagination. The poem’s supple, continuous syntax, plain-spoken musicality, architectural lines, and ample white space deftly convey both what is said and experienced, as well as what is not said or talked about. Reading Dennis Etzel, Jr.’s work is like reading William Carlos Williams, if Williams had had Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas as mothers.

–Joseph Harrington, Things Come On: An Amneoir

Dennis Etzel Jr’s The Sum of Two Mothers wades open-wounded into the unfriendly waters of a society bent on strangle-holding natural love and motherhood into pat definitions: “she was a mother before I thought of her / as my `other mother,’ // or `another mother’ because `mother’ / for me is hard to define.” In tones questioning, unsure, and ultimately defiant, these poems gather together in representation of the complexity of familial love. The Sum of Two Mothers is an imperative story, and one that is cast in lines intuitive, melodic, and resonant.

–Leah Sewell, Birth in Storm