Conversational, irreverent, and disarmingly honest, the poems of But, She Is Also Jane follow the everyday contours of women’s lives and the expectations they grapple with. As our speaker approaches middle age, she copes with the loss of loved ones, the realities of an emptying nest, the routine indignities of sexism, and nostalgia for the past. Bringing high and low culture into conversation, Laura Read’s third poetry collection balances discussions of Degas, Vermeer, Sammy Hagar, and Marie Curie with a rowdy outing to a male revue and memories of watching Mork and Mindy on the night of her mother’s hysterectomy.
Laura Read is the author of Dresses from the Old Country (BOA, 2018), Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), and The Chewbacca on Hollywood Boulevard Reminds Me of You (Floating Bridge Press, 2011).