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Building a Woman

Rated 5.00 out of 5 based on 2 customer ratings
(2 customer reviews)

$12.00 Original price was: $12.00.$6.00Current price is: $6.00.

by Deborah Meltvedt

Released on Feb 15, 2021

Only 1 left in stock

SKU: 978-1-948461-76-4 Categories: Chapbooks, Overstock Sale Tags: California, Deborah Meldvedt, family, Feminism

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  • Description
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  • Sample Poem
  • Reviews (2)

Description

Building a Woman

by Deborah Meltvedt

The collection of poems Building a Woman is a trajectory of one life from girlhood to womanhood with all the complications of family, the joy of friends, grief and loss, and ultimately finding lasting love. It weaves in experiences of growing up as a doctor’s daughter in California in the 1960s and 70s and the cultural expectations of women (and their reproductive lives) in the past and still today. Building a Woman also gives tribute to how we often find worth within prescribed family lives, but maybe more so through long lasting women friendships.

About the Author

AuthorPhoto-DeborahMeltvedt
Photo by Richard Schmidt

Deborah Meltvedt is a high school teacher who loves to blend medical science and art in both the classroom and in her own writing. Deborah grew up in the suburbs and fields of the San Joaquin Valley whose landscapes and culture form a backbone to her poetry. As a doctor’s daughter and feminist, she feels strongly about women’s health and reproductive rights and respecting the traditional and non-traditional paths women take in their lives.

Her poems and stories have been published in the American River Literary Review, Susurrus, Under the Gum Tree, Tule Review, The Poeming Pigeon, and the Creative Non-Fiction Anthology What I Didn’t Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher.

Deborah lives in Sacramento with her funny and supportive husband, Rick Kushman, and their cat, Anchovy Jack, who in his former life used to be a pirate.

 

Enjoy a video of Deborah reading from the book:

Deborah Meltvedt — A Featured Poet on The Poetry Box LIVE (Feb 2021)

 

Early Praise for Building a Woman:

Building a Woman is composed of poems that showcase Deborah Meltvedt’s unique voice in which she delves into her personal history and offers it like a mirror, exposed and shining, to readers. She draws upon childhood’s wishes, adolescence with all its loves and losses, and womanhood’s strengths and vulnerabilities. Her words ring out like bells and call to us like a friend, urging us to come visit; stay a while; enjoy.

—Anara Guard, author of Hand on My Heart

Building a Woman presents a series of candid poems that tell Deborah Meltvedt’s story of girl-dom, of growing up one of four daughters in California’s central valley, struggling to make sense of family discord, budding sexuality and feminism. She accomplishes this with arresting images and precise language that chronicles a woman’s journey to self-acceptance and love, she writes, that “becomes visible on the backs of/ all of us growing up and almost away.” The poems not only illustrate Meltvedt’s life experiences but also offer unflinching glimpses into the universal challenges and joys of what it is to be female moving from one millennium to another.

—Jan Haag, author of Companion Spirit

Deborah Meltvedt weaves words into magic carpets that transport the reader through imagery, memory, and experience—pulling threads from pain, grief, shame, triumph and joy. Her writing takes my breath and rearranges me—in all of the best ways.

—Jodi Angel, author of You Only Get Letters from Jail and The History of Vegas

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Additional information

Weight 4 oz
Dimensions 5.5 × 8.5 × .3 in
ISBN

978-1-948461-76-4

Pages

46

Wholesale Channel(s)

INGRAM

Sample Poem

Doctor’s Office

I grew up in the land of gynecology—
women waiting.
There is the push of heavy doors
into my father’s practice.
We are dropped into the back room like shopping bags
to wait with Highlights magazines and obstetrical manuals,
eating Saltine crackers and drinking 7 Up.
We play with the silliness of plastic wombs,
finger fallopian tubes,
think of drawing fat smiles
on the moose-head likeness of uterine anatomy charts.

In later years, we work in his office
in the kingdom of white coats—
women waiting.
Words like mittleschmertz, yeast infections,
and salpingoopherectomy
fall easily off our tongues.
We laugh at the woman on the other side of the phone
who claims her vibrator makes her pee.
And we look down, solemn-eyed, when
the sound of the Doppler goes silent
against the bulge of a belly
that ripened once, then shriveled.

Years later, I make my own appointments
in towns far from my father’s reign.
And when my name is called,
I squeeze polite-lipped through a room of
sausage legs and swollen bodies
of women giving so much more of themselves away.

Years later, I kill time
lying against paper sheets,
bite my own tongue when the doctor
reaches for something soft beneath my soul,
learn to scoot down and shut up
to stare up at ceilings waiting.

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2 reviews for Building a Woman

  1. Rated 5 out of 5

    cindy domasky – February 8, 2021

    It’s a good day. I received Building a Woman in the mail today. Thank you Poetry Box. I love Debroah Metlvedt. Love her writing, her poetry. And now I can enjoy it whenever I want to.

  2. Rated 5 out of 5

    tamara rakela – March 3, 2021

    This collection was a delight to read from cover to cover and back again. Deborah’s insight and take on womanhood will make you want to gift this for every woman you know!

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