In the titular poem of Hannah Rosenberg's debut collection, Same, she writes, "I still haven't figured out how to keep/ my shower floor clean or make morning/ smoothies or respond to stress calmly./ Same, same, same, my friends tell me,/ a love note of sorts." The love note is the connection offered, the hand extended to remind the poet that she is not alone in grappling with the mundane challenges of the everyday. Every poem in Same is also, by Rosenberg's own description, "some kind of love letter," extending that same compassionate hand in solidarity to readers facing increasingly challenging and complex days and yet yearning for connection, for love, for joy. "Women at a restaurant" asks, "Have you ever been made to feel that your life, just as it is,/ is not poetry? That your words are not art, that eating/ isn't beautiful? I'm here to tell you it is, that it is divine."
In tender and timely poems grouped by relationship--to younger selves, to families, to lovers and spouses and friends and children--Rosenberg tells readers they are not alone. "I will continue to search and to seek out the/ feeling of being in a room of women who talk and listen, listen/ and talk to each other." For those for whom this room feels out of reach, Same can be that space: a collection in conversation with the ordinary experiences of women as friends, daughters, mothers, lovers, often buried under the weight of expectations. Rosenberg's poetry is as reflective as it is reassuring, a balm of community and companionship in a fractured world. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer