Works by
Beth Ann Fennelly
(Poet)
[1971 - ]

Poetry

• Unmentionables: Poems (October 26, 2009 release)
  With elegant word play and her usual subversive wit, Beth Ann Fennelly questions our everyday human foibles.

• Great with Child: Letters to a Young Mother (2007)
  A toddler's mother, both an intimate guide and an affectionate coach, writes to a pregnant friend about the transforming experience of motherhood. "These are letters I would have welcomed when I was pregnant," says Beth Ann Fennelly, as she seeks to go beyond the nuts and bolts or sentimentality of other parenting literature. The letters range in tone from serious to sisterly, from light-hearted to downright funny. Some answer specific questions such as decisions about pain medication; others muse about the identity shift a woman encounters when she enters Mommyland or address our responsibility to the natural world. Still others explore the magic and mysteries of childbirth, the wonders of language, and the exhilaration (also the ambivalence) about a baby's first steps to independence.
  
  Here are modern letters written in an old-fashioned way, not as hasty e-mails but more slowly and filtered through the sensibility of a spirited, fearless poet. Though written for a specific person, their themes are universal, inviting all mothers to join the grand circle of giving and receiving advice about children.

• Tender Hooks ( 2005)
  Beth Ann Fennelly is fearless in delineating the joys, absorptions, and—yes—jealousies of new motherhood. Having studied motherhood "as if for an exam," reality proved "wilder and deeper and funnier" than anything she'd anticipated. Tender Hooks is Fennelly's spirited exploration of parenting, with all its contradictions and complexities.

• Open House (2002, 2009) -- Winner GLCA New Writers Award; Winner of The Kenyon Review Prize

• A Different Kind of Hunger (1997) -- Winner 1997 Texas Review Chapbook Breakthrough Award
  Chapbook

Other

• Writing Under the Influence: Female Poets and Their Mentors, Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker, eds. (Forthcoming)
  See "Bite Me," "Favors," and "Lo, the Child Displayeth Cunning"

• Lineas Conectadas: Nueva Poesia de los Estados Unidos (Spanish Edition) (2006), April Linder, ed. with Hernan Lara Zavalla, ed.

• The Best America Poetry 2006 (2006), Billy Collins, ed.
  See "Souvenir," p. 26

• 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Every Day (2005), Billy Collins, ed.
  See "I Need to Be More French. Or Japanese," p. 15-16

• Best American Poetry 2005 (2005), Paul Muldoon, ed.
  See "I Need to Be More French. Or Japanese, " p. 46-47

• Contemporary American Poetry (2005), April Linder and R.S. Gwynn, eds.
  See "Asked for a Happy Memory of Her Father, She Recalls Wrigley Field," p. 483-484.

• Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems (2002)
  See "Asked for a Happy Memory of Her Father, She Recalls Wrigley Field"

• Poets of the New Century (2001) Richard Higgerson and Roger Weingartenand, eds.
  See "Madame L. Describes the Siege of Paris"

• The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English (2001), Phillis Levin, ed.
  See "Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding" p. 335

• The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses XXV (2001), Bill Henderson, ed.
  See "The Impossibility of Language"

• The Best American Poetry 1996 (1997), Adrienne Rich, ed.
  See "Poem Not to Be Read at Your Wedding"

See also:

• Biography - Beth Ann Fennelly (2007)
  An article from: Contemporary Authors Online by Gale Reference Team, Digital - HTML