Sundress Reads: Review of Your Name Is a Poem

Right from the first page of Roseanne Freed’s Your Name Is a Poem (Picture Show Press, 2024), the theme of motherhood takes over the page, as does the importance of names. This poetry collection is written from the point of view of a parent and the grief process of losing their child to cancer. Freed captures the full arc of motherhood, from the joy of naming a child to the ache of loving and letting go. Centered around a daughter named Mahalia, the poems explores motherly devotion, identity, sibling relationships, and family resilience. Throughout these poems, we readers see the mother trying to grasp any piece of her daughter in all of the memories that she has with her, starting from childbirth and as she grew older. 

The first poem, also the title poem, gives readers a first glimpse of the daughter and the power that the name Mahalia holds for the Freed: “Before you were born, / I knew you were someone special / and needed a unique name; / there are too many girls called / Jennifer, Jessica, or Jane” (Freed 1). As we continue to read, the poem “Our Time Together, Too Short” reads like a lyrical biography, tracing Mahalia’s growth from a baby to a selfless adult. Mahalia’s choice to bike to chemotherapy appointments shows readers her strength and values. The final line, “I loved her even when I didn’t love her” (Freed 5), encapsulates the various elements of parenting: unconditional love, complex emotions, and the pain of watching a child suffer. Freed includes bits of her memories with her daughter right from the moment she gave birth:

From these memories that the speaker decides to share with us, we learn about Mahalia’s experiences through the mother’s lens, the emotions she goes through and how she must keep herself together for her daughter’s sake. 

Different from the previous poems, “A Fearful Thing” shifts the voice to second person, as if Freed is speaking directly to her daughter. In doing so, Freed uses “you” to capture the last conversation that mother and daughter had together before Mahalia passes. Food tends to be a source of comfort during times of grief and struggle. The mother is holding onto this last moment by using a bowl of lentil soup, a dish that now holds such deep meaning. The first stanza of the poem illustrates the warmness of food and how it brings this family together as the speaker says, “A pot of my lentil soup, / our staple meal through the Canadian / winters of your childhood” (Freed 10). In the last stanzas of this poem, Freed writes:

The poetic voice is that of someone who has loved deeply and is now left with the unbearable silence after goodbye. A theme that stuck out to me in this poem is the simplicity of soup. Freed begins “A Fearful Thing” with the line, “Soup, I thought…” (10). This leap from diagnosis to the feeling of home, thinking of soup, encapsulates a mother’s instinct to comfort, nourish, and do something. The lentil soup, which is a staple from childhood, becomes a symbol of continuity, maternal love, and later, unspoken resentment. 

In Your Name Is a Poem, we see a pain that the daughter projects onto her mother through anger. In the poem, “A Week After She Left Us My Therapist Told Me,” the mother seeks help to grieve through her daughter’s loss, but still her daughter’s pain and range from her battle of cancer still finds ways to show up in this grieving process. This poem is shorter compared to the other ones but holds a lot of power. The poem’s length directly mirrors the emotional state of the speaker: raw, constrained, and filled with unresolved tension, each word having weight. The mother/speaker finds it difficult to experience the emotions that she has as she mentions: “If I allow myself to weep, / I hear her— // Stop making it about you” (Freed 18). Since Freed decides to add dialogue, reflecting something Mahalia might have said, the choice of words mirror an upset tone that her daughter would have expressed. Her voice echoes in this poem; even if it’s only projected through Freed, it’s now embedded so deeply that she controls her own grief.

Your Name is a Poem is touching, captivating and filled with different phases of emotions. Freed shares vulnerable moments with the reader during and after her daughter’s battle with cancer. Within this collection, we get a glimpse of what her family went through; we still feel Freed’s intense reality across 35 pages of poetry.

Your Name Is a Poem is available from Picture Show Press

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Angela Çene is a poet, raised Massachusetts by two Albanian Immigrants. She enjoys writing about the body, & how it relates to the world & our experiences. After earning her Bachelors in Writing, Literature & Publishing from Emerson College, she is currently preparing to apply to law schools. Angela enjoys traveling & finding new restaurants.