Kate Baer: “Let your life rest / on what is already good”
This bestselling poet writes about friendship, motherhood, childhood, the ordinary ecstasies of life— and turns appalling social media messages into fresh tiny poems
“I had been working on a novel for a while, like four years.
And I started cheating on it with poetry, which is very fun, very sexy.”
— Kate Baer in this interview
Kate Baer is a poetry rock star. She is the author of three New York Times-best-selling poetry books — And Yet, What Kind of Woman Are You, and I Hope This Finds You Well. She writes about friendship, motherhood, womanhood, the perils of modern life, and savoring “what is already good.”
I confess, I’m such a fan of her poetry that I have a sweatshirt with a line from one of her poems. (I ask you: Why aren’t there more poetry sweatshirts in the world?)
The line “Let your life rest / on what is already good” comes from her poem “Invitation.”
It begins:
They say do one thing a day that scares you— but I say find someone else to scare.
Kate feels so squarely and refreshingly in our time. A surprise. A relief. A gift. She’s hilarious and observant, and she’s dealing with all the ordinary modern-life junk. She’s writing about the perils of social media and body-shaming and postpartum depression. She’s not writing about wild geese. (Although — maybe she is; I should double-check.)
As Joanna Goddard of Cup of Jo wrote:
“Pennsylvania-based poet Kate Baer just gets it. She’s funny, she’s warm, and she writes poems about womanhood with such clear, uncanny truth, you want to glance around and wonder how she knows so much about you.”
Kate’s next book, How About Now, will be released on Nov. 4.
One of the poems in this forthcoming book is a sweet ode to female friendship, titled “The Bridesmaid’s Speech.”
It ends:
there is very little women choose to keep from each other. How lucky we are to know a love like this.
Kate mixes her tenderness for friendship with a clear-eyed look at the unhelpful expectations placed on women. Rather than look away, she takes them on, and adds her own twist.
In the vein of Mary Oliver and so many other practical, clear-eyed poets, she emphasizes the great overlooked joys of ordinary moments.
Kate also writes “erasure poems” — transforming negative social media message by removing most of the words and leaving a fresh, thoughtful tiny poem in its wake.
View one example of her erasure poems.
(This is a similar method to Austin Kleon’s blackout poems, which we wrote about earlier.)
Kate’s erasure poems are featured in her book I Hope This Finds You Well.
“That was a very difficult book to write,” Kate told LancasterOnline. “I was really glad when it was over. It was very tedious because I had to go through so many messages that I couldn’t use. When people ask about doing any more of those, I just say if you want to send me a hateful message, please use nouns, please use adjectives, because it’s really annoying to get a bunch of unkind messages and not be able to use them.”
Kate is a mother of four, and motherhood is a central theme in her poems — something she grappled with once, and has come around to embrace.
“I took a huge break from writing about motherhood. I spent four years writing a literary thriller novel instead, which is unpublished. I was sick of being called a mommy writer. I didn’t want to be called that anymore. I wanted to be taken seriously. It’s only now that I realized that my response to that was playing into it. I am internalizing that misogyny that I feel, and then making it worse by acting on it.
“It was a great lesson to learn. I have to learn things the hard way. People are always talking about other people like, Oh, she’s an old soul. I’m a new soul, really dumb, and have to learn everything ten times the hard way. I spent four years not writing about motherhood, so that I could realize, Oh, it’s okay to do that.
“How many coming-of-age stories have we read about baseball? Motherhood is a universal experience. We’ve all had a mother, in some way. We all come from a mother, for better or for worse. To say that is not a universal experience or to be put in some niche chick-lit column is ridiculous, and I am glad to not be playing into that anymore.”
Us too, Kate.
More, please
On Instagram: @katejbaer — many poems posted here to savor.
Kate’s Substack newsletter,
, which recently featured this charming Ask Me AnythingA Conversation with Kate Baer in The Rumpus
Kate reading Ellen Bass on The New Yorker: Poetry podcast
Kate Baer on the podcast Everything Happens with Kate Bowler
Read her poem “Reasons to Log Off” in The New Yorker.
Three poems and a Q&A on Cup of Jo — and another three poems
I leave you with this excerpt from the above-mentioned AMA, a question from a reader and Kate’s reply:
Tips for dealing with extreme embarrassment with anything you write down?
“Remembering it’s much more embarrassing to get to the end of your life only to realize fear kept you from doing anything at all.”
See you tomorrow with another poet!
Brianne
p.s. If you’ve just arrived to Poetry Buds, welcome! Jenny and I are sharing one favorite poet a day in April, National Poetry Month. Catch up on past poets in the archive.
Love this post, my friend! It was so informative and so lovingly written. Also--sweatshirts? Poetry merch?? Cool! Also-- "cheating on a novel with poetry"--love that. Great post! I'll be re-reading this one!