Twelve Days From Transfer by Eleanor Kedney Review by Jenny Grassl

Twelve Days From Transfer by Eleanor Kedney

Review by Jenny Grassl

Publisher: Three: A Taos Press

Publication Date: March 2024

ISBN: 9781737056089

Pages :101

Twelve Days From Transfer opens with the poem titled “Infertility Compendium,” a list of cures for infertility and labels for infertile women that were used throughout history. We enter the realm of enchantment—think of Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters’ list of ingredients concocting a brew.  “Twelve Days From Transfer” refers to the waiting period for successful implantation of the in vitro fertilized embryo. Kedney offers some names and cures from history:

“Devil-poisoned seed.
Wandering metra.
We drank the cures: urine,
the blood of pregnant animals,
ate powdered boar penis,
the hind paws of weasels.”

Spells are often disruptions of nature, incorporating fragments of animals and plants, sometimes grotesque. Infertility is also regarded as a disruption of what is thought to be the ‘natural’ state of woman, fertility. “They covered us in pessaries, cumin, resins, and pity.” This may seem quaint, but as this book makes clear, the human desire to control outcomes of birth is abundantly expressed in modern science and medicine. Much of this lends support to women, increasing the likelihood of successful childbearing, but  the question  of why some women cannot get pregnant persists. Replete with witchy lists of elaborate sequences of procedures to enhance the probability of an embryo implantation, (pregnancy), occult and unworldly territory arise in these pages from the technology of in vitro fertilization. A strength of this book lies in its transformation of a dense body of scientific information into lyrical wonder. 

“Because they check you every other morning, then every morning / at 7:30 a.m.,
take blood, do a vaginal ultrasound, and you see the black pools / of your follicles,
mapped by x’s, intern of the day calling out the numbers / to record until there are
some thirteen on the left ovary and at least ten on the right, / over 18mm averages,
and he’ll smile as he says, Tonight might be the night, / and you actually look
forward to HGC, Profasi or Pregnyl, the toughest shot / for side effects, but he
says, We’ll call you when we have your Estradiol.”

Images take shape in Twelve Days From Transfer in a fertile garden of the strange which is also familiar.  The poem “The Womb Is Shaped Like an Inverted Pear” implies the disruption of a ‘normal’ pear, a condition for all women. To reinforce the idea of the womb as an inversion, the poem reverses in the middle, to create a line-by-line palindrome. Reversed texts are often thought to be magical, and this poem works as a spell. The symmetry of the palindrome reflects symmetry of the uterus. 

“Six Gray Moons on a Screen” delivers a stark but hopeful image on an ultrasound of six viable embryos.

“An article proclaims heaven
is populated by the souls of embryos,
conceived, unknown, lost
in menstrual flow, not mourned.
But ours were six gray moons on a screen. “

The speaker names them, an act of hope. The disembodied embryos are made more knowable, at least as mysterious beginnings, as moons. 

Other women’s ordeals and tragedies interleave pages of the speaker’s journey to have a baby, widening the scope of one person’s pain to a shared, universal sorrow of contingencies. How many conditions must be precisely right to conceive, and to successfully transfer an embryo to the uterus. “There was a baby,” says a friend, of her own miscarriage. All the words spoken to the book’s speaker are fraught and freighted with double meaning. Yes, this woman lost a baby. However, we also hear the ghost words: ‘YOU only lost an embryo.’ This is not explicitly written, but is conveyed eloquently, a silence presented without bitterness. Kedney leaves space for the reader to fill in some emotional blanks, to participate in the pain, transformed by personal discovery. 

The well meaning comments and advice of others chatter throughout the book. The cumulative effect is devastating. One poem lists what “They said…” and we understand the ironies and despair. Other stray examples of what people said appear again and again, no less powerful for being dispersed, like a spell that is nearly a curse. Kedney names the dark, to engender the light.

“They said, There’s always adoption.
They said, God has a plan.
They said, It’ll happen.
Trust me, you’re lucky you don’t have kids.
They said, Hang in there.
They said, Focus on your career.
My husband just looks at me and I get pregnant…”

The question may arise: Where is the light in this thwarted journey? There are multiple sightings as answers, but a shining purpose fills a series of poems about the speaker ‘adopting’ (sponsoring), a nineteen year old Indian woman. The loneliness of the speaker, unable to become pregnant, is addressed by reaching out in an alternative form of motherhood. She travels to meet the young woman. The mother of the woman says, “She is your daughter now. I give her to you.” The reply:  “I’m her sponsor; you are still her mother.” This is the reality of the situation. The speaker asks an honest question of herself: “Can I love her like a daughter I gave birth to?” Being able to ask this question enhances the authenticity of their unfolding relationship.

The poem “Pivot” is about ”chasm” and “reach” in the IVF process, but also the relationship of the woman and her husband. They discuss whether they would have the procedure of amniocentesis or not. The chasm describes the distance across which the embryo must reach to become a pregnancy, and the difference of opinion about tests. “My eggs would meet your sperm.” She imagines reaching out to her husband with good news. Though silence fills the chasm, some participation in the magic of life creation has been granted. From the poem “Once More:”

“We know union—eggs bound
by sperm, six cradled, none conceived.
White, round chrysanthemums
spill over. The yellow ray flowers
awaken the bees.”

From “Ascending Grace:”

“We made zygotes you say
dust between the stars”

Kedney delivers emotion without sentimentality. Looking at the natural world of flowers, and the hardships a seed endures to become a plant, she places human conditional pregnancy and birth beside the seed, before us. The narrative of the IVF journey flows in and around nature. 

In the poem “Idiopathic Infertility Phenomenon,” after receiving the news: “There are no more fertility tests left to do” the speaker recalls a childhood memory:

“I kicked excavated soil with the edge of my sneaker / back into the ant mound. I 
used to call the soil dirt. Dirt is different from soil: nothing grows / in dirt, it has
no history. When organic matter or rock —parent material—deposits / then ages, 
soil forms. When it washes away it becomes a pile of dirt. Ants turn and aerate / 
it, water reaches plant roots, and the soil building process begins again. Soils lie 
where / earth, air, water, and life meet. My body, body.”

This and other passages place infertility outside the realm of aberrant, into a living part of the wondrous, dangerous struggle for life. “There Is No Infertility in This Poem” names the ordinary objects of everyday life: “hammer  doorbell / fire starter log / mail slot / gas / pump…” the matrix out of which lives unfold. The choice of words creates a workaday magic. The last lines:  “someone / giving mouth-to-mouth / resuscitation” hints at the life and death nature of even this somewhat ordinary process. There is no infertility but things develop and are threatened. Most importantly, life can be given back. 

A poem about the speaker’s grief, shared with other grieving people, reaches to the heart of loss and sharing. “Women Pruning Pear Trees ” is the last poem in the book. The pear image reappears, in a February when fruit is impossible. The tools and procedures of pruning are detailed: 

“We took the dead and damaged limbs, 
knowing the unsung trees might not fruit that year,
but with our work they might the next. Inside,
there was lentil soup and warm bread, a long table.”

The last line says, "My arms ached from reaching toward the canopy." This is indeed a book about reaching , and the canopy gives us an image of abundant life, even in the dead of winter. The fertility of loss overcomes despair, thriving possible through suffering. By sharing the grief with others, and extending the idea of love and caring beyond biological birth, purpose develops. The heartbreak and failed pregnancies take their places in the vastness of the cosmos.

Eleanor Kedney is the author of the poetry collection Between the Earth and Sky (C&R Press, 2020), a finalist for the 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards and the 2020 Best Book Awards, and the chapbook The Offering (Liquid Light Press, 2016). Her book Twelve Days From Transfer  was published by  3: A Taos Press (2024.) Eleanor’s poems have appeared in various literary journals and magazines, including Connecticut River Review, Many Mountains Moving, Miramar Poetry Journal, Mudfish, New Ohio Review, Pedestal Magazine, The Fourth River, The New York Quarterly, and others. Kedney is the recipient of the 2019 riverSedge Poetry Prize (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) and a finalist in the 2020 Mslexia Poetry Competition. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Stonington, Connecticut. 

Jenny Grassl lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Boston Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Bennington Review, Lana Turner Journal, Fairytale Review, and others. Magicholia, her first book, was published by 3: A Taos Press in 2024. Her second book, Forever Mistaken for Ourselves, won publication by Tupelo Press for their 2024 Open Reading Period, and is forthcoming in 2026. 

22 October 2025