Sunday Morning Poetry: A Conversation with Wendy Wisner
The New Life: Poems (Cornerstone Press, 2024) is poet Wendy Wisner’s newest, exquisite work of art. Wisner’s second most recent poetry book, Morph and Bloom (CW Books, 2013), was written more than 10 years earlier. Why such a long time in between publications? Wisner was busy mothering two children who are now teenagers, offering lactation consulting services to new mothers, and earning her living as a full-time freelance writer.
Just google the prolific Wisner, and you’ll discover she was an associate editor for the successful mommy-blog-turned-pioneer-mothering website Scary Mommy during its boom years. She’s been a contributing writer for heavy hitters like Parents and The Washington Post. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in top literary magazines like Alaska Quarterly Review and Spoon River Poetry Review, and Wisner has even published poems and an essay with Literary Mama. Now, she has morphed to become an avid health journalist, using her pre-nursing background to concentrate mainly on women’s health and reproductive issues.
As an editor for Literary Mama, I’m intrigued by writers who wear multiple hats and achieve success in various genres. When I saw Wisner’s post about the release of The New Life: Poems, I contacted her right away. I caught up with Wisner via Zoom to learn about how she taps into creativity and what she thinks about her writing journey. This interview has been edited for content and clarity.
Holly Rizzuto Palker: How did you get started writing, and what has your career path looked like?
Wendy Wisner: I used to think it was weird, how circuitous my journey has been, but now I think that a lot of people have this same experience. I started out as a writer. Since I was a child, it felt natural to me. It was the only thing that was easy.
I also was always interested in birth and babies, even as a young teenager. I thought there was something beautiful and intimate about the way our bodies work. I wanted to be a nurse or a midwife, so I was a pre-nursing major.
When I took a literature class [at Hunter College], I thought, Oh, my God! I forgot how much I love English. So, I started taking creative writing classes, and that was it. I switched my major and I got my MFA.
Then I had kids and motherhood was a completely different world I’d entered. My passion for women’s health exploded. I was interested in breastfeeding, became a La Leche League leader, and finally became a board-certified lactation consultant because so many mothers struggled with nursing. I was writing, but not that much, until I started a breastfeeding blog, which had a few posts that went viral. One, called “To the Mom Nursing a Toddler,” did very well, and Scary Mommy messaged me asking to post it on their website. That started my freelance writing career.
HRP: What was mommy blogging, during the boom years of the genre, and working at Scary Mommy like for you?
WW: I didn’t really want to be a mommy blogger. But, it was great because I wrote through the early childhood of my children. I started writing a lot of posts for Scary Mommy, became a staff writer, then ran their teens and tweens Facebook page, and finally, I became an associate editor until they were bought in 2021. Then I started writing for other publications, like Parents, What to Expect [and] BabyCenter, Healthline, Health, and Care.com.
HRP: What inspired you to compile The New Life: Poems, and what did you find fulfilling about the process and journey?
WW: My second book of poems, Morph and Bloom, was published in 2013. But in the years that followed, I focused more on freelance writing and raising kids. Still, I’d written and published poems during that time, just more intermittently. But then I just said to myself, “Well, what do I have?” I looked at everything, and I saw threads, so I put together this book. I was very lucky that the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point picked it up. In the past few years, I’ve made an effort to fit poetry into my life again: writing and reading it, being engaged in the poetry community, and connecting with other poets. Poems feel like containers where I can put difficult emotions and experiences that I can’t put anywhere else.
HRP: You make your living as a full-time freelance writer. With two kids, how do you have time for poetry?
WW: I carve out time to work on poetry every Sunday morning. It’s been a revelation for me and I’m writing through some difficult experiences right now, especially with my aging parents.
HRP: What about the title, The New Life? I assumed the book would be about childbirth, but there is so much more to it.
WW: Yes, it’s definitely supposed to highlight the themes of childbirth and new babies. But I wanted it to have multiple meanings too. It’s the title of the last poem in the book, which is a hopeful piece, so I liked that idea. There’s a lot included about early motherhood and gaining a new perspective on life, a new chance at life, and making a new life for yourself or at least trying. There is always a feeling of the past being in the present, and sometimes I have trouble feeling present in my life because of everything that has happened in the past. My childhood, family history, and intergenerational traumas all informed the title and themes of the book.
HRP: The poem “The Father” struck a chord for me because it was reminiscent of 9/11.
Hours later, I sat on our stoop in Brooklyn, a bottle of cold seltzer in my lap
and you⸺
covered in ash, came
floating
across the Queensboro bridge,
home to me.
What sparked the idea to write it, and which feelings were you hoping to evoke?
WW: I wanted to convey a sense of what it was like to be in the middle of a catastrophe. I tried to recreate the mood of that day by describing people covered in ash and phones not working. But I was also bringing other aspects of life, like conceiving children and the fragility of marriage and relationships, into it. [When I wrote it] I was thinking, we are not safe, we are vulnerable. Sandy Hook was also a pivotal moment for me because I had really young kids at the time and thought, okay, bad things can happen, and my kids are vulnerable.
HRP: I connected with “Questions for My Sister” and other poems where you seemed to be trying to figure out the deeper meaning of life.
Was there a day,
just one, when we stopped desiring
together staring with our one eye
into the creamy noon’s skin?
Or was the ending more
gradual, pieces of me spinning
from you like dandelion seeds?
After writing the poems, did you get your answers to those questions?
What I love about poetry is that you don’t need to answer the question. The question is the feeling, and it’s valid to never get an answer and not know.
HRP: What is your favorite poem in the book and why?
WW: “Every Night He Asks Me to Tell Him the Story of Spring” is my favorite. I vividly remember because I wrote it while it was happening, and my son was asking me to tell him a story at bedtime. It was the narrative of me telling him the story and my thoughts while I was lying down with him, putting him to sleep. It was one of the many instances where I wrote a poem along the edges of my life.
HRP: What advice do you have for other mom writers who might be interested in publishing poems or essay collections?
WW: Just do it. Believe in yourself. Read what other people are writing. Speak your truth whether or not it feels like it is going to be universal. As a writer, you should know that your unique, weird, and strange self is what people want to hear. People want authenticity. Don’t think about the audience. Find your voice and take the risks that you need to take in order to say things that are true.