<p><em>The Favorite</em> is in Cig Harvey&rsquo;s words &ldquo;an arrow to the heart.&rdquo; Its sixty-four poems are gently shaped into three parts as Watson leads readers into her childhood&rsquo;s world of social privilege recognizes the psychological costs inhabitants pay and demonstrates a wide and wonderful range of reactions.</p><p>Most of the fifteen poems in Part I are based on childhood memories. Four sisters ride uncomfortably in the back seat of the big car ordered not to wrinkle their Sunday dresses while their brother &ldquo;rides shotgun and wears what he wants.&rdquo; A girl manages to paddle around in an old canoe but her sense of freedom comes from keeping herself hidden or pretending she&rsquo;s Pocahantas. Gender norms strongly favor the family&rsquo;s only boy and its powerful charismatic father whose presence inspires awe and fear compliance and rebellion. Straight women passive women pretty and well-dressed women&mdash;enjoy question and are damaged by their privilege. In &ldquo;Another Hurricane Coming&rdquo; for example we understand what&rsquo;s lost when a mother no longer wants her children to &ldquo;feel the wind.&rdquo; The fifteen&nbsp; poems in Part II stretch the threads first spun in childhood into adolescence by turns angry loving subtle and compassionate. &ldquo;When I Think of My Mother I See a Closed Door&rdquo; ends the section appropriately.</p><p>Part III is longer-- its voice generally older more accepting more free in its metaphors and<br />marked by a wonderfully wry sense of humor. As Richard Blanco says &ldquo;Watson tenderly yet<br />unabashedly speaks to the allure and trappings of womanhood as she traces its arc from the innocent<br />expectations of a girl to the fear of a teenager forced to conform to a fully actuated woman ... self-aware and fully alive with all her past and her future her pain and healing her losses and her newfound hopes.&rdquo;</p>
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