{"product_id":"the-second-child-isbn-9780812973884","title":"The Second Child","description":"Nine years after the stunning debut of her critically acclaimed poetry collection \u003ci\u003eA Working Girl Can’t Win\u003c\/i\u003e, which chronicled the progress and predicaments of a young woman, Deborah Garrison now moves into another stage of adulthood–starting a family and saying good-bye to a more carefree self.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Second Child\u003c\/i\u003e, Garrison explores every facet of motherhood–the ambivalence, the trepidation, and the joy (“Sharp bliss in proximity to the roundness, \/ The globe already set aspin, particular \/ Of a whole new life”)– and comes to terms with the seismic shift in her outlook and in the world around her. She lays out her post-9\/11 fears as she commutes daily to the city, continues to seek passion in her marriage, and wrestles with her feelings about faith and the mysterious gift of happiness. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSometimes sensual, sometimes succinct, always candid, \u003ci\u003eThe Second Child\u003c\/i\u003e is a meditation on the extraordinariness resident in the everyday–nursing babies, missing the past, knowing when to lead a child and knowing when to let go. With a voice sound and wise, Garrison examines a life fully lived.Deborah Garrison is the author of \u003ci\u003eA Working Girl Can’t Win: and Other Poems\u003c\/i\u003e. For fifteen years, she worked on the editorial staff of \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e and is now the poetry editor af Alfred A. Knopf and a senior editor at Pantheon Books. She lives with her husband and three children in Montclair, New Jersey.On New Terms\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI’d like to begin again. Not touch my own face, not tremble in the dark before an intruder who never arrives. Not apologize. Not scurry, not pace. Not refuse to keep notes of what meant the most. Not skirt my father’s ghost. Not abandon piano, or a book before the end. Not count, count, count and wait, poised—the control, the agony controlled—for the loss of the one, having borne, I can’t be, won’t breathe without: the foregone conclusion, the pain not yet met, the preemptive mourning without which nothing left of me but smoke.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGoodbye, New York (song from the wrong side of the Hudson)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou were the big fat city we called hometown You were the lyrics I sang but never wrote down\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou were the lively graves by the highway in Queens the bodega where I bought black beans\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003estacks of the Times we never read nights we never went to bed\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe radio jazz, the doughnut cart the dogs off their leashes in Tompkins Square Park\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou were the tiny brass mailbox key the joy of “us” and the sorrow of “me”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou were the balcony bar in Grand Central Station the blunt commuters and their destination\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe post-wedding blintzes at 4 a.m. and the pregnant waitress we never saw again\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou were the pickles, you were the jar You were the prizefight we watched in a bar\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe sloppy kiss in the basement at Nell’s the occasional truth that the fortune cookie tells\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSinatra still swinging at Radio City You were ugly and gorgeous but never pretty\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ealways the question, never the answer the difficult poet, the aging dancer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe call I made from a corner phone to a friend in need, who wasn’t at home\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe fireworks we watched from a tenement roof the brash allegations and the lack of any proof\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003emy skyline, my byline, my buzzer and door now you’re the dream we lived before\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot Pleasant but True\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis afternoon when the bus turned hard by the graveyard,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ethe stones sugared with snow, I wanted to go there, underground.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou’re thirteen weeks old. Cold shock, as never wished before:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eto die and be buried, close under the packed earth,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esafe for an eternal instant from my constant, fevered fear that\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eyou’d die. Relief warming my veins,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eand you relieved forever of my looming, teary watch.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSomeone take from me this crazed love,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003esuch battering care I lost my mind—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI was going to leave you without a mother!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePlay Your Hand\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA joy so full it won’t fit in a body. Like sound packed in a trumpet’s bell, its glossy exit retains that shape, printing\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eits curve in reverse on the ear. A musical house, with more children than you planned for, a smallest hand, and fingers\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eof that hand closing on one of yours, making a handle, pulling the lever gaily down, ringing in the first\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ejackpot of many, with coins and cries, heavenly noise, a crashing pile of minor riches—\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd if the worst thing imaginable were to happen where does the happiness go?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe melody flown (where?), you think you wouldn’t live one more day. But you would.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDays don’t stop. You toss your glove at the moon, you don’t know what may come down.Author of A Working Girl Can't Win; [quote]--Entertainment Weekly","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304161988837,"sku":"NP9780812973884","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780812973884.jpg?v=1767741383","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-second-child-isbn-9780812973884","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}