Childcare
By Rob Schlegel
2023
First Published
3.43
Average Rating
75
Number of Pages
Crackling with the hypervigilance of parenthood, Childcare explores the paradox at the root of raising the joy of new life accompanies an awareness of potential loss. Rob Schlegel’s fourth collection observes the tangled emotions of fatherhood; even as he wonders at the strange intelligence of youth, he elegizes the present moment. The longitudinal wisdom of this collection appears in the choreography of its leaps—how it moves from the aside “[My son] needs my love the most when he least deserves it / Is something I read” to the reflection that “Death / Names my shape. I keep my clothes / From dust and ghosts and time. / I’m angry at my father for aging.” From Schlegel’s relentless curiosity and keen observations, the artistic crisis driving the book does poetry memorialize the ephemeral moment, saving something for us, or does it remove us from experience? The duality of language’s role—that it, ultimately, has the capacity to do both—doubles the significance of “childcare” in this collection, which comes to represent not just the work of child rearing but the dutiful care by adult children for their parents. Perhaps nothing can convey the scope and quality of family life like the concatenated dependencies of “(Un)conditional,” which terminate “If the cut draws blood / If life ends in desire // If it begins in love.”
Avg Rating
3.43
Number of Ratings
7
5 STARS
29%
4 STARS
14%
3 STARS
43%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
14%
goodreads
Author
Rob Schlegel
Author · 5 books
Rob Schlegel serves as co-editor of The Catenary Press, which is dedicated to publishing long poems. His writing has appeared in Boston Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Jacket2, New American Writing, The Volta, and elsewhere. Born in Portland, Oregon, he has lived most recently in Iowa, Montana, and Washington.
