Synopses & Reviews
Mothers Over Nangarhar is an unusual and powerful war narrative, focusing less on the front lines of combat and more on the home front, a perspective our American cultural canon has largely ignored after 222 years at war. In her stunning poetry debut, Pamela Hart concentrates on the fears and psychological battles suffered by parents, lovers, and friends during a soldier’s absence and return home, if indeed there’s a return. With honest grit and compassionate imagination, Hart describes her own experience having a son overseas, incorporating lyric meditations, photography, news articles, support group meetings, family interviews, oral histories, and classic literature to construct a documentary-style narrative very much situated in the now. Blending reality with absurdism and guided openly by a Calvino kind of logic, Hart reveals to us a crucial American point of view.
An unusual and powerful war narrative told in poetry, focusing on the psychological battles suffered by parents, lovers, and friends on the home front.
Review
"Reading this extraordinary book gives you a vision of the home front view of war. It is loved and highly recommended." An Interview with Pamela Hart by Amir Shefayee, Medium
Review
"In her debut poetry collection, Hart brings a new, salient voice to our home front in times of war. . . . An artist by training, Hart creates word images that allow us to contemplate private and public pain. Certain lines stand out in these glowing poems: 'Like the Spartan women, we polish / our sons in the concrete firmament.' Or: 'My syntax breaks to lake ice / Who am I to translate the exodus of birds.' . . . [F]inely crafted poems." Booklist
Review
"Rich with literary, political, and geographical references, Hart’s debut collection details the journey of a mother whose son is serving in Afghanistan. . . . Hart’s drive to keep looking and listening while 'the long war goes on' reads like a fundamental act of compassion." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Pamela Hart is writer in residence at the Katonah Museum of Art where she teaches and manages an arts-in-education program called Thinking Through the Arts. She was awarded an NEA poetry fellowship in 2013. She recently received the Brian Turner Literary Arts prize for poetry. Her poems have been published in a variety of journals including the Southern Humanities Review, Bellevue Literary Review and Drunken Boat. Toadlily Press published her chapbook, The End of the Body. She is poetry editor and mentor for the Afghan Women’s Writing Project.