“Women learn / from an early age to sit with one another in great / discomfort.” So writes Kate Baer in the newest addition to her oeuvre, How About Now. With the overwhelming success of her previous books What Kind of Woman, I Hope This Finds You Well, and And Yet, Baer has long been regarded as a beacon of feminist accessible poetry. Her latest book is no different, offering new poems exploring the most intimate moments of womanhood, the new movements that arrive with time, and how we’re never quite able to shake off girlhood’s grip. Both within this collection’s pages and as an address to readers, Baer insists on the wild magic of women’s lives tangled in our own and each other’s knowing.

Baer’s new collection once again throws suspicion on the unceasing, panic-stricken rumor that poetry is on the outs with the rest of the literary world, that readers no longer find it worthwhile. In fact, the advent of social media and more digital publishing spaces has only made poetry reading more accessible to broader audiences. That accessibility is needed more than ever in an era where we are searching for camaraderie and connection.

Connection is precisely where Baer’s work, especially How About Now, shines. Baer’s writing is wholly honest, not shying away from the more uncomfortable aspects of motherhood and marriage. In “Comedy Routine,” Baer subverts a particular stereotype of motherhood:

Some women will say 
the happiest day of their life
was when their child was born.
And I think, lady—
when my son was born,
I ripped from v to a,
I couldn’t shit without calling the police.

In this way, Baer actively seeks an honest and even playful connection with readers, offering not merely relatability through shared experiences, but also a celebration of the complexity of these experiences. Throughout How About Now, Baer casts motherhood as altogether holy, frustrating, painful, joyful, and even as a wounded sort of hope. To that end, in “One Day,” she muses on time’s shifting of the parent-child relationship:

It’s not so bad—
but if you’re waiting for a hug
or gentle conversation,
I suggest not looking very desperate.
Lie on the floor, get out your book.
Eventually they come.

Similarly, in “marriage poem,” Baer explores the frustrations and comfortable mundanity of marriage, writing that this poem is not about sex: “Instead, we have whole milk. Fruit flies. / Four kids. Apologies dressed as turkey sandwiches.” Baer situates this piece and others like it not as a mourning of the ordinariness but as an exploration of its complicated intimacies. She confesses: “The happiest hours of my life have been / alone, watching my family through a window. I love my life, / except for / the noise of it.” Here, Baer’s ability to write compassionately and with quiet vulnerability is made especially evident. 

Yet, as with her other work, Baer again juxtaposes the mundane with womanhood’s more fraught underpinnings, from the constant consideration of our bodies to the ever-looming threat of violence. As typical of Baer, she makes reference to our broader sociocultural context and dialogue in “Would you rather be stuck in the woods with a man or a bear?” as she writes: “Yes, the earth has given us many / dangers, but none as great as Adam. / One hand showing us their devotion, / the other reminding us who’s free.” Baer again situates herself as a poet deeply engaged with the goings-on of our digital spaces with the invocation of the “man or bear” question that has circulated on social media since 2024, while also stitching its broader meaning into the fabric of every woman’s existence. That is, the specificity of “man or bear?” may be a pop culture artifact, but its actual ask has long been known to us.

However, what strengthens How About Now further, to my mind, is Baer’s intentional and fervent exploration of women and our want. Baer’s poems explore satisfying hunger and exploring its possibilities, such as “I’m Going to Eat It,” where she imagines swallowing the sun: “I’m eating it with my mouth open. Eating it until I / become light itself. Light moving through the leaves.” This piece, like much of Baer’s work, maintains a mess in its beauty, where light and ferality are not mutually exclusive to one another. This feral image rears its head again in “In Case It Wasn’t Clear,” where Baer declares that “being a teenage girl in heat / will not stop me from being a bright young woman in my 40s.” In these and other poems, Baer continuously flexes a wild and ravenous joy, as complex as it is certain. And at the core of How About Now is, I think, an offer to join in that hungry joy, to be privy to the desires and grief and levity laid bare in these pages. We’re invited to come and see. And we’re invited to want.

As we search for connection in an era of increasing isolation, I don’t think we can ask for better than Baer’s relatability. As Maggie Smith writes, Baer’s newest work is “part mirror, part outstretched hand.” How About Now is not abstract or hard to grapple with, but plain-spoken, direct, and conversational. It’s a torrent of confessions and secrets and a practice in vulnerability. At the heart of it, it’s women talking. And, as Baer puts it:

I’ll let you in on a little secret:
there is very little women choose
to keep from one another.