More Water Than Tears

by Rebecca Lynne Bluemel

What is the process of relearning and redefining oneself when one’s world falls apart? This collection of poetry  travels one view of a life that shatters into new life amidst trauma and examines what needs allowance and gentleness to heal and grow. In such a state of growth, these poems attempt to remind the reader that it is ok to cry, but to also remember to have more water than tears.

Enjoy a video of Rebecca reading from her new book:

Early Praise:

More Water Than Tears by Rebecca Bluemel is an evocative exploration of transformation, grief, and resilience, celebrating the strength found in vulnerability and the beauty within fragility. Through poetic meditations that begin with the words “speak to me of the cocoon,” Smolen invites readers to reflect on life’s in-between spaces—those moments where we are both confined and expanding, poised for change. From the piercing ache of motherhood’s quiet sacrifices to the solace found in nature and ancient mythology, this collection draws deeply on the personal to reveal universal truths. Smolen’s work is a testament to the endurance of the human spirit, the way loss and hope can intertwine like the silk of a cocoon with the understanding that “there is an elegance to being / beautiful when you’re at an edge.” Her poems guide us into the embrace of our own transformations, even when painful, reminding us that rebirth is a powerful revolution.

—Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Dialogues with Rising Tides

 

In this third poetry collection, Rebecca Bluemel gives us evidence that healing from trauma is possible, but one must be willing to implicate oneself in order to understand what is essential. “I am forever unfinished,” her speaker admits in one poem. In another, she wonders if her life would have been different, “had I paid better attention to the monotony / I taught myself to fall in love with.“ In brief conversational poems, Bluemel seems to be speaking both to us readers and to herself. In one of the book’s most poignant poems, her youngest child gives her written advice: “Always believe in yourself,” the note states, though it is spelled this way: “All ways be live in yourself.” These insightful and revealing poems provide guidance we all need..

—Andrea Hollander, author of And Now, Nowhere but Here

 

In More Water Than Tears, Rebecca Bluemel exhorts us to “speak of the cocoon.” She delves into how the most cataclysmic changes can be hidden—inside a chrysalis, in quiet supplications to mythological figures, or cloaked in the passage of time. We experience drowning, mourning, and recovery—caught up in the process of reinvention with her.

—Trina Gaynon, author of Quince, Rose, Grace of God

 

In More Water Than Tears, Rebecca Bluemel leads us into deep views down and in—of change that’s “swaddled to bring back to womb,” of the weeks before “white hyacinths / in each corner, tulips to cradle” and of what can be held in “small / pale blossomed palms.” These are poems that limn the cusp, that in defining what’s not faced or what’s incomplete by naming season, sentiment, creature and myth, we can put ourselves on the road to freeing ourselves.

—John Miller, author of Olympic and Andes

About the Author

Rebecca Lynn Bluemel is a Gateless® certified facilitator, group leader, and writing coach. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her two adorable gingers, leads a current series of generative writing workshops online, and owns and operates her own pet sitting business, Home Sweet Home Pet Care LLC. Her book, Excoriation, and chapbook, Womanhood and Other Scars, were previously published by The Poetry Box.  Her poetry has appeared in The Poeming Pigeon, Feminine Collective, Cirque, Tiny Seed, and many others.

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by Rebecca Smolen

Excoriation is an honest, thought-provoking exploration via poetry, into motherhood, relationships, heartache, love, and the cosmos. Rebecca Smolen shares her experiences in a way that’s meant to dig a little deeper, delving into each wound until nothing but truth remains. Through evocative metaphor and verse, Smolen challenges her readers to let these poems get under their skin, even if it hurts a little, for this is where healing begins.

About the Author

Rebecca Smolen is a writer based in Portland, Oregon transplanted from New Hampshire in 2014, and is a mom of two adorable little gingers. She grew up on a dead-end road exploring drainage pipes and pond life. She has a strong feminist voice that sometimes gets trapped within society’s confines, but vows to teach her son and daughter that there are no confines.

Smolen has a degree in creative writing and philosophy and works as veterinary technician. She is trained and certified in the Gateless Method and leads writing workshops employing this method, which was scientifically created to avoid provoking the fight or flight reaction generating a safe place to produce raw, new writing that will spotlight the strongest aspects of that material.

Her first chapbook, Womanhood and Other Scars was published by The Poetry Box in 2018. Her poetry and essays can be found most recently in Allegory Ridge, Feminine Collective, Tiny Seed, The Inflectionist Review, Unchaste Anthologies, Hip Mama, Mutha Magazine, VoiceCatcher: a journal of women’s voices & visions, The Poeming Pigeon: Cosmos, and the anti-fascist anthology, Shout.

Early Praise for Excoriation:

When you stare long enough into darkness, you fabricate what you may need; what might need you. Smolen’s compelling work does this enticing dance across the pages. Each piece falls into its own structure, rhythm—a movement that calls out to them. Wanting them, needing them in just the perfect two-step to make your eyes follow them from moving through “water” to the “beyond.” In this intricate dance with words, Rebecca leaves us wrapped in possibilities of what love looks like in self and the love tango with others.

—Nastashia Minto, Poet/Author of Naked

Rebecca Smolen’s Excoriation is part declaration and part dream of a travel in the honesties of existence. From the spark that is “My Call to Verse,” to the inner and outer travel of “{Body as Home},” to the closing call to endlessness that is “Moribund Happiness,” this collection invites the reader to experience unalloyed entanglements of history, agency, anger, and love, and of hope that can reside at heart.

—John Miller, founder of Portland Ars Poetica

In Rebecca Smolen’s Excoriation, you experience alchemy, the transformation of a woman’s raw loss into a dance, a music, a clear vision, “how the stars/are brightest in the northeast in winter.” In poems addressed to her lost love, she remembers the first goodbye after the first kiss, how it “became the new snow smell/mixed with the smoke from each chimney,” and you feel that relationship char in words, “raw and still bloody.” Smolen’s poems are “heavy with the life [she knows she has] needed to release.” In rich language and provocative shapes, her poems are generous acts, each a form of healing, “to fall first,/ to shine… to know how to rain,” their “purpose to ease another’s” pain. Read these brave poems to understand that the world “is merely attempting to find its own way back” through the mystery and science of this writer’s voice.

—Kate Gray, author of Carry the Sky
and For Every Girl: New & Selected Poems

Enjoy Rebecca Reading from Her New Book:

Rebecca Smolen — A Featured Poet on The Poetry Box LIVE (Nov 2020)

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by Rebecca Smolen

This collection of poems explores what it means to be a woman in the 21^st century. Through the eyes of the poet as young girl, teenager, daughter, granddaughter, wife and mother, we traverse both the triumphs and heartbreaks of womanhood. Let these poems blanket you in the realization you are not alone—you have a community who will help you navigate the waters of misogynistic behavior and societal expectations. The scars of each of our experiences are there to remind us how far we’ve come, and give us the strength to keep rising.

About the Author

Rebecca Smolen is a writer based in Portland, Oregon transplanted from New Hampshire in 2014. She has a deep love for short story, poetry, hugs and animals. She grew up on a dead end road exploring drainage pipes and pond life. Since settling here, she works as a veterinary technician, volunteers with the Pacific Pug Rescue, chaperones class field trips occasionally for her two small children, promotes ‘feminism is for everyone,’ attempts to stay connected with friends, goes to as many writing workshops and retreats as her budget and time constraints allow, and pet sits on the side to earn funds for the aforementioned.

Rebecca enjoys writing darker than most would assume of her, diving deep into forgotten memories and her weird dreams which fuel her creativity. She loves twisting the normal route of thinking and creating new metaphors. She is a true believer that once put down in print, words are no longer for the writer, but instead are meant to help, heal or console others.

You can find her writing recently published in the Unchaste Anthology, Vol. 2, Mutha Magazine, and VoiceCatcher: a journal of women’s voices & visions.

[Instagram: @MC1Rsnap / Facebook.com/rebecca.smolen.5 ]

What They’re Saying…

Womanhood & Other Scars is more than a book. It’s an invitation, not just to peer into the inner life of its author, but to walk around, sniff the marrow inside her bones and explore the bruises buried deep inside. These 24 poems take an unflinching look at life, using metaphors that pulse with the heat of a variety of emotions, from the intensity of maternal love to the aching need to break free from isolation and anxiety.

Many of the poems also celebrate the happiness of connecting with others. In “Dusting,” Smolen muses on the particles of dried skin cells that coat her and “considers of what creatures, wounds, this dust was stripped.” She also comes to the conclusion that in a world where our cells all intermingle, “I can no longer be considered a singular woman nor ever deserted again.” Similarly, in “Where Has Peace Gone?” she says she will “gulp heartily without breath” the laugh of a loving friend. That, she says, is where peace is.

The wounds described in Womanhood and Other Scars often stem from a sense of disconnection, especially between parents and children. The mother in “Never Far From Dwelled Upon Fairytales” is determined to help her daughter achieve outward beauty, but ends up damaging the child who’s now haunted by repeated criticisms of her appearance. In the same poem, the child’s innocence drowns in the “disappointed sigh” of her dad.

In Smolen’s world, the isolation of people living in their separate shells can be intolerable, but through her art, she bravely seeks to make connections by exposing her rawest emotions in her finely crafted poems.

~ Linda Ferguson,
author of Baila Conmigo

Rebecca Smolen’s Womanhood & Other Scars refreshes the messages in Anne Sexton’s poetry: a woman is more than a mother/daughter/wife, more than the blood she spills. Each poem exposes complicated relationships, her mother’s hands like “ballerina’s feet un-shooed” or choosing the “easy love” of children over a sleeping husband. These poems unleash truth that might be unbearable if it weren’t so carefully crafted and deeply developed.

~ Kate Gray
author of Carry the Sky

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