"Framed by the author's own experience of early motherhood, Pocket Universe examines how the world becomes both more wondrous and more perilous in the permanent after of parenthood. Nancy Reddy's poems probe that wonder and danger through examinations of her own experiences of pregnancy, birth, postpartum difficulty, and all the ordinary joys, heartache, and tedium of life with small children. Setting that personal narrative against a backdrop of larger questions about human origins and ways of knowing, Pocket Universe inquires into our place in the universe and how we acquire knowledge through history, archaeology, scientific study, and our own bodies, while also reflecting on current events that expose ongoing violence against mothers and children. With its innovative, boundary-breaking poems, Pocket Universe considers motherhood with both candor and tenderness"--