Things Hard and Lovely

Things Hard and Lovely is a collection of poems about motherhood, identity, time, and fragility spanning a decade spent witnessing and reflecting on the mundane miracles of life. The poems kaleidoscope between the personal and the universal, dancing with the physical world and the spaces untethered to the earth (digital, spiritual, and otherwise).

$18.00

Order Now

Praise for Things Hard and Lovely

“Things Hard and Lovely maps a raw, unguarded place between tough cynicism and vapid optimism, where mothers must live. This collection is a beautiful testimony to desperate love and steadfast fear, a fragile history of a woman’s fragmented but unbreakable heart. While mothering moments are familiar, Curtin’s fresh angles kept on showing me something unexpected. So even when I was saying “yes, yes, it is that way,” I was turning her new metaphors in my mind.”

-Lydia Netzer, author of the New York Times Notable Book, SHINE SHINE SHINE.

“The level of resonant detail in Curtin’s poetry is breathtaking—descriptions of moments, both grand and mundane, that perfectly encompass the emotional melting pot of pride, love, terror, hope, and gratitude inherent in parenting. Things Hard and Lovely is lovely indeed, and hard in the same way as a diamond—compressed by pressure into something stronger and more beautiful.”

-Audrey Burges, author of The Minuscule Mansion of Myra Malone.

“Things Hard & Lovely offers readers an intimate glimpse into a household teetering between creation and chaos. The joys, worry and exhaustion of mothering reel through this collection like a kaleidoscope of bright gems we seek, but ‘learn to love the absence/of light.’ A glimpse into ‘a wild molten love’ of mother, wife, and daughter, these poems sing their way into the world barefoot and breathless. At its core we see the dichotomy—a quiet son we wish to keep gentle and a daughter, a blaze of wildfire we wish to let spark—but fear the flame. Just like Curtin calling to us from the edge of each poem; here I am, mother, yes, but oh, so much more. You’ll turn to these poems again and again just to relive the fleeting moments of everyday nurturing captured in a viewfinder you’ll click through with awe.”

-Kindra McDonald, author of Teaching a Wild Thing, In the Meat Years and Fossils

“Curtin takes parenthood by the hand and “pours glassfuls of grace” as she walks through the joyful and painful tears of living for someone else. “Things Hard & Lovely” leaves the reader feeling seen and understood, while a little melancholy. Curtin’s poems express the worries and woes of parenthood, sweetened with quiet moments of contentment to make them bearable. She touches the often overlooked middle years of childhood. Where all the wishes and wonder are lived through and lamented as not enough at the end, when the bed has grown too small. Things Hard & Lovely” will be a go to book for new parents, and parents feeling alone in the overwhelm of child raising.”

-Laura S. Tarasoff, author of Warm Cinnamon Rolls on Sunday Morning

About the Author

Shannon J. Curtin is a poet, essayist, humor writer, and novelist whose work has been featured in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Reader’s Digest, Scary Mommy, Points in Case, AARP, and other publications. Her first chapbook, File Cabinet Heart, was the 2014 winner of the ELJ Publications Mini-Collection Competition. Her second chapbook, Motherland, was published by Anchor & Plume Press in 2015. She spends her non-working hours raising two kids with her husband, reading stacks of novels, and trying (and failing) to rid her home of dog hair. She holds an MBA, competitive shooting records, and her liquor. She would probably like you. You can find more of her writing at www.shannonjcurtin.com.

Things Hard and Lovely

Praise for Things Hard and Lovely

About the Author

Discover more from ELJ Editions