Letdown

"With Letdown, Sonia Greenfield proves herself a master of the prose poem, finding just the right metaphor, just the right syntax. This book-length sequence reads like a love story between a mother and her son, and like all love stories-all the true ones, anyway-there is pain alongside the joy. Greenfield takes us down into the dark, confronting what it is to feel helpless against your child's suffering, to mother a child with special needs, to recalibrate one's life after loss. But she also leads us back into bright California sunlight, where we find the boy-and this messy life-rising from the depths, 'buoyant, better than expected.' " -Maggie Smith, author of Good Bones "Beautifully constructed in sixty stand-alone parts, this book-length poem presents-artfully, honestly-a woman's difficult parsing of motherhood. We first meet her in the hospital suite, the careful birth-plan abandoned, as it was as effective as 'closing a sliding door on a tsunami.' Later, we follow her confusion and terror through her son's autism diagnosis; during the EEG test, she distracts him as wires are gelled to his head, saying, 'Look, now you get to become a robot.' Her son's traumatic medical journey is detailed alongside her hidden trauma, fertility loss. Sonia Greenfield has used her excellent ear and metaphorical power to create a moving and necessary book." -Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs