The poem is more broadly about the struggle of the speaker to separate from her mother and be born as an individual, and of course, about the same conflict confronted by all mothers and daughters throughout time.

The poem’s opening introduces a wonderful pun—the word “seems.” It’s a kind of doubling that characterizes the poem as a whole, and through it we come to see sewing a seam as a metaphor for something larger—the domestic life, the life relegated to women as a whole in the nineteenth century.

I find today’s poems marvelously lyrical and experiential—phrases like “sweet deviant chant,” “less the nuance,” and “suave hours” give sharp delight in their sound and sense.

One strength of today’s poem, though, is that it works even for readers not familiar with that infamous case involving a Stanford swimmer convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious young woman behind a dumpster. Even before #metoo, sexual assaults like this are common enough, unfortunately, that readers will get the gist.

This brief lyric poem captures a moment familiar to most parents experiencing dismay at the state of the world and the need to grapple with that in the context of having children they want to protect.

Cynthia Neely’s “Me Too—The Fall of Man” gives me the opportunity to consider multiple ways poets use imagination as craft.

Bravo to Selena Shephard for these unique, sensitive, and brave poems.

Readers who enjoy the idea of mixing poetry and math will love this book. And those who don’t will appreciate it anyway for the way its poems engage—no, positively grapple—with what some call a patriarchal form, and in so doing manage to express the depth and complexity of human yearning, love, and loss.