POETS ON ADOPTION IS, AGAIN, FRESH!

with Carrie Etter providing a powerful contribution from her vantage point as both adoptee and someone who gave up a child for adoption. Here's an excerpt:

At 17, I gave up my own son for adoption. At first I wrote about it confessionally; at readings in L.A., where I moved at 19, I often read a poem about childbirth in the knowledge I was giving him up and came to consider it my “signature poem.” Once, following a reading, a woman approached to express her sympathy for the pain I’d experienced in surrendering him—and said the poem made her glad she’d gone through with an abortion. I’m pro-choice, but I was aghast at such a response and think it was the last time I read the poem publicly.

Go HERE for her total contribution, including her poem "A Birthmother's Catechism" that concludes

How did you let him go?

Who hangs a birdhouse from a sapling?