I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom

A rich, complex, heartbreaking, and funny anthology of poems on motherhood—being one and having one.

Kim Dower’s poetry has been described by the Los Angeles Times as “sensual and evocative . . . seamlessly combining humor and heartache,” and by O Magazine as “unexpected and sublime.” Acclaimed for combining the accessible and profound, her poems about motherhood are some of her most moving and disarmingly candid. I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom is an anthology of her poems on being a mother—childbirth to empty nest—as well as being a daughter with all the teenaged messiness, drama and conflict, to finally caring for one’s mother suffering from dementia. Culled from her four collections as well as a selection of new work, these poems, heartbreaking, funny, surprising, and touching, explore the quirky, unexpected observations, and bittersweet moments mothers and daughters share. These evocative poems do not glorify mothers, but rather look under the hood of motherhood and explore the deep crevices and emotions of these impenetrable relationships: the love, despair, joy, humor and gratitude that fills our lives.

Price
Tradepaper: $15.95 / ISBN: 978-1-63628-088-2
Casebound: $19.95 / ISBN: 978-1-63628-023-3

ADVANCE PRAISE

“What we inherit from our mothers, what we carry forward, what we never receive, and what we choose to leave behind—Kim Dower’s poetry resonates with the echo of a rich and complex mother-daughter relationship that she gently and carefully unravels, line by line. This is a stunning collection from a poet whose wisdom as a daughter and a mother shines through on every page.”
—Hope Edelman, author of Motherless Daughters

“In Chinese, the written character for “mother love” is composed of two elements—”love” and “pain.” Kim Dower understands this universal concept in her bones and captures its meaning in these beautiful and powerful poems.”
—Lisa See, New York Times bestselling author of The Island of Sea Women