REVIEW: NATALIE SHAPERO’S HARD CHILD

Written by Cassie Wilson

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Hard Child. Natalie Shapero. Copper Canyon Press. Townsed, Washington. 2017. Soft Cover. 67 pages.

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If Shapero’s Hard Child was read by the great feminist poets of the 1960’s they would lack enthusiasm. Not in her poetry, but in the lens of an unchanging world for women. Shapero’s poems undress the topics of humanity, feminism, pregnancy and death. She dances around these topics with witt, unrelenting humor and a twirl of sarcasm. Her poems lack structure and rhyme, in sense that calls for attention. They will stop you - mid coffee sip and force your jaw to drop. They are not optimistic. They are not bright and buoyant. They are certainly not jolly, but in the best ways possible. Her opening poem, "My Hand and Cold", begins in the middle of a thought, just as most of the poems in her collection do:

“Of surgeons putting their knives to erroneous
body parts, stories abound. So can you really blame
my neighbor for how, heading into the operation,
he wrote across his good knee NOT THIS KNEE?”

If Shapero’s Hard Child was read by the great feminist poets of the 1960’s they would lack enthusiasm. Not in her poetry, but in the lens of an unchanging world for women. Shapero’s poems undress the topics of humanity, feminism, pregnancy and death. She dances around these topics with witt, unrelenting humor and a twirl of sarcasm. Her poems lack structure and rhyme, in sense that calls for attention. They will stop you - mid coffee sip and force your jaw to drop. They are not optimistic. They are not bright and buoyant. They are certainly not jolly, but in the best ways possible. Her opening poem, "My Hand and Cold", begins in the middle of a thought, just as most of the poems in her collection do:

“Of surgeons putting their knives to erroneous
body parts, stories abound. So can you really blame
my neighbor for how, heading into the operation,
he wrote across his good knee NOT THIS KNEE?”

The poem begins with one sentence which allows the reader to be immediately drawn in. She is referencing surgeons, people of usually high regard, making mistakes in surgery. You can sense a tone shift when the word "blame" is mentioned, which connotes feelings of shame. She then talks about her neighbor and his surgery, how he felt the need to specify to the surgeons, "NOT THIS KNEE". The shame is directed to the surgeons, whom her neighbor does not trust. The distrust is carried into her next lines,

"The death of me: I’m never half so bold. You will
feel, the doctor said, my hand and cold –

and I thought of the pub quiz question: which three
countries are entirely inside of other countries
I bought the bound ONE THOUSAND NAMES FOR BABY,
made two lists: one if she’s born breathing, one if not".

​The speaker’s pregnancy is revealed here, as well as her unwillingness to put her life and her baby’s life literally in the hands of the surgeons.  She references, "You will feel, the doctor said, my hand and cold" showing imagery of a sonogram where the doctor places their hand and the ultra sound machine on the Shapero's stomach, the coldness stays with her. Reminding her of that same distrust in the medical field, referenced in the line prior, "The death of me: .." Later on in the poem she reveals that the second of the lists she has created was longer than the first and that if she were to call her baby any of those names her baby would not have to undergo all the shaming, blaming and ridiculing of the world. This is where Shapero’s dark sense of the world is shown, exemplifying the overall theme of the collection: her lack of belief in humanity.

This theme is epitomized in her cover poem: Hard Child. Shapero explains:
    
“I was a hard child, by which
I mean I was callous from the start”.

Shapero's lense of the world is sculpted in this line. She is insensitive and cruel. Someone who pays no attention to others. The poem continues to embark on a list of things she would not carry on about humanity if she were a survivor of “a grand disease or blast" (line 11). She picks apart the human ideals of religion, marriage, holidays, art and money. This poem is an example of her disinterest in human tradition. These ideals have no significance to her, they lack meaning and truth to her life and her journey on earth.

Those ideals may have no significance to her, but a topic that is recurring throughout her collection that does is women's rights.

In the “World of Change” podcasts by the editors of the Poetry Foundation, the first episode: The Wilderness begins with the question “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?”

Natalie Shapero’s poem, Mostly I Don’t Want to Have a Son---, addresses this very question. The poem begins with:
    
“too many fears.” 

This opening phrase addresses the scrutiny that woman endure in a world where men are essentially on top. The poem addresses many “what if’s” about a boy and what his life will hold. Shapero addresses, “What if he has to kill her with his fist?" (lines 13). This line is powerful because it holds so much truth. She addresses the issues that many feminists bolster about  The fact that women are killed everyday by men, sometimes just for the fun of it. The poem ends on a note that makes you pay attention to what is being said:
   
“...I don’t want to have a son.
A daughter is simpler. All she needs to learn
is neither to speed nor be caught, and if she is caught,
make him follow her to a parking lot,
somewhere bright and unclosing, before she cuts
the engine. Always ask to see a badge.

The bitter truth of law enforcement taking advantage of young woman is repulsing. Shapero addresses this issue with hard truth. Earlier in the poem she states many reasons she doesn't want a son, all involving a life filled with achievements in the workplace to gain meaning, ignorance in war, violence against animals, woman and children. She then compares these aspects with the life of her daughter, involving the fear of being abused, beaten, raped or killed. She undresses the subject of women and girls living in fear for their lives due to men manipulating, violating and taking advantage of them.

There is a recurring theme throughout this collection that emphasizes women living in fear of men. In her poem, The Mind of Popular Pictures, Shapero addresses the issue of men violating women. She describes:

“I never believed? In a movie, if a man
gets x-ray vision, he can see a woman naked.
He can see through her hooded coat
and then through her button-down and
then through her bra, and he does not
Overshoot. He does not see through her
skin and then through the flatness
of her sternum and then through the acid
in her cell”.

Shapero paints a picture of men glorifying women’s bodies instead of their minds. It is not uncommon for a woman to walk in the streets day by day and be checked out by men gruesomely. They are not looking at their character, beliefs, ambitions or achievements, but at their breasts, stomachs, arms, hips and waists. She can not believe that in the movies this kind of “x-ray vision” is glorified and not scorned.

In the end of her collection Shapero has finally given birth to her child. She addresses the do’s and don’ts of being a mother, as well as the world itself through her cynical lense. In the last poem, The Sky, she talks about death and how she will “disappear” without a glimmer.

“...It wont be like when
the Mona Lisa was stolen and the tourists all
lined up to pay their respects at the empty
spot on the wall of the Louvre”.

Her death will not be a remembrance, where mass amounts of people will mourn over her. There will not be lines down the streets waiting to say goodbye. There will not an abundance of tissues from the myriad of wet eyes grieving over her absence. Shapero addresses death not as a great final farewell, but as an inevitable end. She does not seem saddened or torn over the subject. She is direct and straight to the point, much like all of her poems in the collection.

​Shapero’s Hard Child brings awareness to the discrimination of women, the bitter truth of death, the struggles and hardships of pregnancy and just living in general. She is not sensitive. She does not sugar coat her poetry. She is a “hard child” with no remorse in the bleakness of the world.
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Overall, the collection was cynical, witty and unrelenting. It embarked on a journey of truths in the world that many people are ignorant to. Her form and structure was not uniform. It did not show any conformity. It was messy and outside the lines, which showed how the world and humanity are complex, tangled and filthy with sin. The book is a talisman to truth. It should be cherished, read, passed on and definitely, by all means, not forgotten. 

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