Increase is Lia Purpura's chronicle of her pregnancy, the birth of her son, Joseph, and the first year of his life. She recounts her journey with the heightened awareness of a mother-to-be and through the eyes of a poet, from the moment she confirms her pregnancy as "A blue X slowly crosses itself, first one arm, then the other in the small white window of the test," through "the X of his crossed feet in sleep" as her child's world begins. Purpura's sensibility transcends the facts of personal experience to enfold the dramatically changing shape of a larger, complex world.
These closely knit essays portray the rhythms of a new mother's life as it is challenged and transformed in nearly every aspect, from the emotions of wildness, loss, need, and desire to the outward progress-and interruption-of her work and activities. Increase offers us motherhood at an extraordinary pitch, recording, absorbing, and revisiting experiences from a multitude of angles. Purpura presents her story of discovery with unequaled eloquence, grace, and power.
"After reading Increase, I imagine that Lia Purpura might be interesting about any subject she decides to take on. She turns journal entries about her pregnancy and the first year of her son's life into an evocation of a sensibility, and finally, into literature. I love the way her sentences move, and how they nimbly bear the weight of the complex intelligence behind them."
Stephen Dunn
"Shadows of a Sunbelt City offers a compelling analysis of the power that universities wield in regional development and their complicity in reshaping the urban form to benefit powerful actors, often at the expense of vulnerable residents. As he examines how policy and social relations transform cities, Tretter challenges the narrative that sustainable urban policy, and the knowledge economy that
Carol Muske
"Awe is one of many things a reader can gain from reading Increase. Here we are in the hands of an original-thinking Madonna, one who sees honeycombs in the playpen mesh and bathwater as a silver scarf. She reminds us that the miracle of birth is real to someone all the time, and that everyone, even the murderous terrorist on the evening news, started out as somebody's baby."
