Between 1837 and 1852, Catherine gave birth to ten children.
One died, at almost one.
The affair with the young actress began in 1857.
In 1858, Charles tried to institutionalize Catherine.
Her doctor refused.
Project
This
is not a biography in poems.
Not
a search for presence.
Not
a re-enactment of a person:
more
like a walk
through
a meadow
where
someone had built
a
steel sculpture. You can pass
through
its legs and perceive what
parts
of trees, sky, September
clouds
back-lit and molten
look
like where you stand
and where you stood.
As If
While I read about her
wet nurse one afternoon,
on my phone,
of course (“bad mom”),
I thought I knew
my child was on the
swing
in front of me
and I thought I lost
only moments,
but when
I looked up the seat
swung emptily and it
was as if
A Mother in Dickens
from Hard Times
Pink-eyed
bundle
of
shawls
tidies
cabinets—
minerals
and shells—
like
a feminine dormouse,
even
the imagination
of
the novelist stretching
like
a wet stocking
to
offer us this
analogy:
Mrs. G.,
weakly
smiling,
faintly
looked at
the
tongs, which makes
sense
as it was her
job
to tend the fire
and
feed
all
those kids, I think,
but
there is more he says
of
her, this omniscient
mind.
The family man
invites
us to see her
wondering
if
the tool should be dug
under
the jewels of
broken
tinder, furrowed
like
a brain.
That
this is
the
most appropriate thing
her
imbecility could think
of
doing,
the book says—
no,
not everyone
could
stride in
and
demand tea
and
round o’s and i’s,
ink
on paper like starlings
eating
from a weedy field,
like
pottery smashed in dirt
heaps
and buried
while
children ran around
coughing
and shitting in pans,
no,
but she might have showed
a
symptom
of
coming to life. If
he let her.
She might
speak.
