A woman is a series of shifting possibilities. The frame that contained her in the morning can transform into something completely different by afternoon. The roles she’s called on to play mutate over the years and throughout a lifetime. And her very place in the world is called into constant negotiation. In this swirl of contradictions, finding her own self—her core—can be a bewildering journey. Woman Prime is about the fundamental human wish to settle into an authentic self, a “prime” identity. It follows one woman through her roles—child, adult, wife, mother—and shows how she must remake herself through each new stage.
Like many women, the speaker believed that leaving her parent’s home, falling in love, and raising children would reveal the essential core of herself. Instead, she learns that those she loves can fail her and that she must embrace a world full of flickering and conflicting expectations for women. Woman Prime is about every woman and no woman—a mutable voice that will still resonate with anyone trying to reconcile their flawed and complicated selves.
Like many women, the speaker believed that leaving her parent’s home, falling in love, and raising children would reveal the essential core of herself. Instead, she learns that those she loves can fail her and that she must embrace a world full of flickering and conflicting expectations for women. Woman Prime is about every woman and no woman—a mutable voice that will still resonate with anyone trying to reconcile their flawed and complicated selves.
DiMaggio is a poet whose work is memory. She recasts the past so we begin to understand that the world actually has only two temperatures—love and fear: ‘Precisely. No bias or preference. Everything equal in its burning away.’ Woman Prime looks directly at the life of a daughter and wife and mother all the while showing us how silly it is to try and see our whole and complex existence without getting tears in our eyes. Heartfelt and headlong, this is a beautiful debut.
With cheek to the gritty skin of the sidewalk perspective, mines memory and masterpieces for reflection at the moment of recognition. She’s familiar / with disaster—a daughter lost to suicide. / Paintings a boyfriend cut from the frame/ to wrap the plumbing. Through the works of Alice Neel, Singer Sargent, Kahlo, de Koonig, Warhol, and through a collage of family history, DiMaggio painstakingly restores the relentless beauty with sensuous honesty.
Gail C. DiMaggio is a writing teacher and poet living in Concord, New Hampshire. Her work has appeared most recently in Salamander, Slipstream, Tishman Review, ELJ, and Magma.
