Laura Read’s Comments for selecting this chapbook:

I admire the way this collection is organized in three sections: Ground Control, Breathing Space, and Outer Space, and how the space motif, emphasized by the opening epigraph from Carl Sagan, provides unity for this collection. This unity is also created through the repetition and alternation of various themes, including memories of childhood, snapshots of a marriage, and elegies for friends lost, children not had, time going by. Each poem is well-crafted with attention to imagery, so I felt like I was a part of the speaker’s world; for example, in one of my favorite poems in the collection, “Living Below Sea Level,” the speaker describes their longing for hurricanes for “that chance/ to masking tape our windows in ‘Xs’,” which is such an exact image that captures a child’s mind and the experience of living in a particular place. I also love the poem’s ending: “So often, though, no winds/ ruptured palm fronds, no storm eye quieted, no school/ got cancelled, in spite of our loyalty, our sacrifice,/ our willingness to monitor, that taping and alarm naught,/ our only celebration some early morning chocolate milk/ and extra bowls of Alpha Bits.” These lines capture something I really like in this book: each poem is a small moment that contains something bigger when observed and described closely, a small piece of orbital debris.

Weight explores what it is like to matter in a physical sense—we step on a scale and a number represents us—and to matter in ways that defy measuring. What forces tie us to our loved ones and to our existence? In this volume, Fran Schumer addresses those questions in direct and always readable prose. In embracing what is free in herself, in her children and on our planet, she reminds us that we do matter. All of us have weight.