{"id":5953,"date":"2026-08-24T15:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T15:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/?post_type=books&#038;p=5953"},"modified":"2026-08-25T16:46:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T16:46:51","slug":"the-balance","status":"publish","type":"books","link":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/books\/the-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Balance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Balance<\/em> examines motherhood and the fragility of love in today&#8217;s uncertain, volatile America. Moving between received forms and narrative verses, these poems trouble the heart of parenting&#8217;s untranslatable reality in an age of chaos. The poems also consider where mothers might put our much-demanded attention and asks to whom we might listen, undercutting advice to strive for balance from online influencer culture. Instead, in a sequence that mourns the loss and appropriation of Ukrainian culture and personal ancestry\u2014and creates a form out of the image of the nesting dolls\u2014the speaker seeks out the voices and misplaced knowledge of the mothers inside mothers who\u2019ve taught us how to mother; similarly in a crown of sonnets addressed to the speaker\u2019s children and anchoring the middle section of the book, the speaker considers the balance of a mother\u2019s life, asking how we might, caught in the terrible loops of violence and war, still \u201cmake our small plans.\u201d The poems seek perhaps not balance or order in chaos, but a measure of joy, and a good deal of hope.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":5954,"template":"","subject":[54],"browse_by_series":[],"browse_by_imprints":[],"conference":[],"class_list":["post-5953","books","type-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","subject-poetry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/books\/5953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/books"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/books"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/books\/5953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5961,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/books\/5953\/revisions\/5961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/subject?post=5953"},{"taxonomy":"browse_by_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/browse_by_series?post=5953"},{"taxonomy":"browse_by_imprints","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/browse_by_imprints?post=5953"},{"taxonomy":"conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraries.clemson.edu\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/conference?post=5953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}