Book Review: Nestuary by Molly Sutton Kiefer

Nestuary
Lyric Essay by Molly Sutton Kiefer
Ricochet Editions, February 2014
ISBN-13: 978-1938900051
$15.00; 98pp.

The desire to be a mother. The small aches and sensations of pregnancy, of one’s own body. Circling around non-chronological sequence of events surrounding the complications to even become pregnant, two pregnancies, childbirth, and care, Molly Sutton Kiefer’s compelling book-length lyric essay, Nestaury, employs a nest of forms to entrance the reader within these intimate moments. Three overlaying chapters comprise a fragmented story, where, after learning she has polycystic ovary syndrome, which my or may not be hereditary, Sutton Kiefer begins a series of intensive treatments to become pregnant. As Sutton Kiefer informs the reader, “This story has a happy ending,” leaving one not to read to discern any semblance of a linear narrative (from conception, to pregnancy, and after), but to drift within the artifacts, instances, and moments of tension and joy the essay imparts.

Through its multiple forms—poem, prayer, fragment, list, and narrative—and a tonal range from informational to contemplative to imaginative and speculative, Nestuary explores different facets of the desire for motherhood, and not only her own. She narrates her best friend’s birth as well as Greek mythology and stories of women who were kept on life support to preserve the life of the child. And yet, at times an uneasiness and uncertainty hangs throughout these moments that surface in the midst of providing glimpses of her own birthing experience, where her own birthing plan goes awry and doctors perform a ceasearian section. Even earlier, noting how “I’m remarkably and unsurprisingly bad at being pregnant,” Sutton Kiefer, in a collected list of “foibles, stones in my pocket,” relates, “Slender pain started in my wrists. Slow tingle. It started when I was knitting a kicking bag for the baby. A cabled sleeping sack. Little strands of sock yawn tangled at my feet.” And, later, “I learned to write clearly with curved metal shafts abutting my thumb.” And yet, “Even then, my hands tingled, grew numb.”

What the lyric essay affords, and to which Sutton Kiefer works to her advantage, are the gaps, fissures, and circularity required to let the reader space to explore and navigate this experience, to take one’s time. Through both experiences of pregnancy, the space allows the fluid navigation. Alone with her daughter, Sutton Kiefer sees how “My verb came in brilliant spurts of blue-white. I’d indicate my floppy chest, crow a bit. // The snow waked against our windows; it was only Me and Her.” An imprinted memory for her children, and a welcomed offering to the reader, Nestuary offers rich and nuanced language in so many forms for the reader to wonder at.

Alyse Bensel is the Book Review Editor at The Los Angeles Review and Co-Editor of Beecher’s. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks Shift (Plan B Press, 2012) and Not of Their Own Making (dancing girl press, 2014). Her poetry has recently appeared in Mid-American Review, Heavy Feather Review, and Ruminate, among others. She is a PhD candidate in creative writing at the University of Kansas