Press — Kate Baer

HOW ABOUT NOW

BOOKLIST

Popular poet Baer signals, from the first pages, an intention to reveal layers of the self that are emerging or have newly emerged. The speaker asserts, “I am out with lanterns. / I am out with loaves and fishes.” The evolution may be revelatory of past selves, while sharing what feels like a gesture of fellowship. “I love my life, / except for / the noise of it,” Baer offers. She walks the reader into various interactions the speaker has with her children, in group chats, while maintaining an aging body, and in response to the mundane. Most of the poems are small and concise, although some take the form of documents, such as a patient intake form or a school’s “Emergency Drill Record.” Each small poem, with its clear and digestible musings, shapes the book’s overarching exploration of the passage of time and the fleeting nature of life’s stages.

THE WASHINGTON POST

Kate Baer makes poetry look easy, but it’s not. In clear, accessible language, she writes about ordinary joys and travails — cleaning dog vomit off the carpet, trying to get a doctor’s attention, wrestling a child to school. She’s often funny, usually at her own expense, but she has a sharp eye for the humiliations of modern life and the comedy of a long marriage. Her delightful new collection, “How About Now,” contains a poem entitled, “You Used to Text Me for Nudes But Now It’s Just For Information For Our Taxes.” This poem, which any parent can relate to, is a terrific example of her ability to transform the ordinary moments of family life into art.

NPR

NPR's Scott Detrow sat down with poet Kate Baer at Midtown Scholar, a bookstore in Harrisburg, Penn., to talk about her new book of poetry, How About Now.

Harper's Bazaar

Kate Baer’s newest collection of poetry is a luminous exploration of aging, transition, and self-discovery. How About Now solidifies the bestselling poet as one of the most authoritative and renowned voices on issues that universally resound for a modern woman, from contemplations on motherhood to musings on the entrance to midlife.

Maria Shriver’s SUnday Paper

For years, Kate Baer has captivated hearts and minds with her poems—and now she returns with her anticipated new compilation that explores motherhood, midlife, and finding ourselves. A poem excerpt here.

MPR NEWS

Baer’s latest book of poetry, “How About Now,” captures the mundane beauty of what it means to be a modern woman in midlife. She writes of shifting roles and shifting bodies, of the joy she finds in her family — even if she’d rather stand outside and look at them through the window, and the unique bond in female friendships.

WBUR

At WBUR, Kate was in conversation with Annie Hartnett, a best-selling novelist, and it was a joy to see them talk about writing and how engaging with the community around their work enriches their lives. It was also really something to witness the sold-out crowd demonstrate Taylor Swift-levels of excitement for a poet.

SHELF AWARENESS

This tender poetry collection explores themes of modern womanhood, reveling in and romanticizing the mundane and offering reflection and recognition.

SHE WRITES

Kate Baer strips the journey of self-discovery raw in her collection of poems that explore the journey into middle-age. Baer lays bare the experience of seeing children grow up and away, and finding how to reclaim the self as it has hidden itself away for so long. Honest and striking, Kate Baer’s poetry captures the beauty of life in each of its seasons and reminds its readers of the intimacy in exploring the self.

SOUTHERN LIVING MAGAZINE

New York Times bestselling poet Kate Baer reflects on aging, motherhood, and sense of self with honesty, grace, and humor. Through her intimate and thought-provoking poems, she captures the beauty and vulnerability of transformation, reminding readers that growth is both inevitable...and empowering.

American Booksellers Association

Sometimes I think reading Kate Baer's poetry is as good as therapy. She examines womanhood at various stages of life, laying bare the complex struggles and emotions that come with each. Baer encourages readers to grab hold of their desire and hunger for life and take a triumphant bite.

REAL SIMPLE

November TOP BOOKS choice: How About Now, the spectacular new collection by bestselling poet Kate Baer (What Kind of Woman), is all about change: the effects of getting older, what it’s like to watch your children grow, and how relationships evolve (or don’t). Touching on everything from text chains to bridesmaid speeches to panic attacks, the poems uncover the profundity behind our seemingly ordinary lives. Keep this slim book on your nightstand—it reads like words of compassion from your wisest friend.

TWo Truths

Living, for me, is throwing spaghetti at the wall. Not being afraid of failure. Taking risks. Creating art that feels alive. Spending time in the real world with real people and all of their mess and nuance and comedy. It’s all I want. It’s all I pray for. I hope that’s what’s next for the rest of my life.

CUP OF JO

A giggly evening with Kate Baer

BIG SALAD

Nine ways this poet is coming out to play.

Library Journal

The fourth collection by bestselling poet Baer (And Yet) explores motherhood, marriage, life in one’s 40s, and finding joy. The collection feels a bit like lifting from a depression, with some poems that sound like pep talks urging one to get out and explore the world while it’s possible: “To avoid suffering is to commit to it. / How many times I have forgotten/ to live and let live with a story to tell.” Baer also plays with form poems and blackout poetry in the collection, with poems such as “Elementary School Emergency Drill Record,” which depicts a kindergarten class doing an active-shooter drill, and “Panic Attack Assessment Worksheet,” in which the speaker is in the hospital after having a panic attack. Although the collection tackles serious subjects, Baer still maintains her signature humor throughout the book. There is lightheartedness and an honesty in Baer’s poetry that has earned her a large audience, and this latest work offers both virtues. Longtime poetry buffs and poetry newcomers alike will enjoy this collection.

SHE READS

In this luminous new collection, Kate Baer captures the ache and beauty of middle age. From releasing children to reclaiming self, and reckoning with time’s relentless march. With her signature candor, she sketches poems that feel both intimate and universal, as if she’s speaking directly to the pulse of modern womanhood.

Barnes & Noble Booksellers

Top pick for the holiday gift guide.

BOOK RIOT

Top new release.

MOTHERHOOD MOMENT

The poems are short but thought-provoking, capturing an experience that is both extremely personal but that will also resonate with women everywhere.

INSATIABLE PODCAST

If you’ve been feeling a little lonely, uncertain, or in-between — or all three — this one is for you.

AND YET

The New Yorker

Kate Baer joins Kevin Young to read “The Morning After,” by Ellen Bass, and her own poem “Mixup.” Baer is the Times best-selling author of three poetry collections, including, most recently “And Yet.”

NPR

Kate Baer is a three-time New York Times best-selling author. Baer’s poetry found a following during the pandemic, when millions of women were struggling to balance work and caregiving. She has long been clear about what having childcare has meant to her own career: “I can't do a single act of writing or creating or thinking about writing unless I have childcare. Without that, there's nothing.”

Mother Magazine

The good news about rejection,” she explains, “is that it’s often a gift. An avenue to a new direction or a different voice. It can be quite painful, but I don’t know of any artist who hasn’t experienced loads of rejection. Hearing those stories helps too.

Lancaster Online

Kate Baer felt like she was having a fling. The author should have been working on her debut novel. But instead, she found joy indulging in a different creative endeavor: poetry. “I had been working on a novel for a while, like four years,” Baer says. “And I started cheating on it with poetry, which is very fun, very sexy.”

Pop Fiction Women’s Podcast

On this episode of Complicated Conversations, we welcome back Kate Baer, the three time New York Times bestselling author, Aries, Enneagram four, and our absolute favorite modern poet. If you don't own multiple copies of her most recent collection, AND YET, you are missing out on feeling seen as a woman, mother, wife, daughter, sister, and friend.

WITF January Book of the Month

WITF is partnering with Midtown Scholar on a Pick of the Month. Read along and discover books we think you’ll like. January’s pick is And Yet: Poems by Kate Baer.

Indie Poetry Bestseller List

Indie Poetry Bestseller List, based on sales at independent bookstores nationwide for the eight-week period ending January 1, 2022.

Sara Peterson

[Kate’s] words have resonated with women, many of whom tell her they are coming to poetry for the first time. In a year in which all people, but perhaps especially mothers, are grasping for words to express their exhaustion and anger, in Baer they have found someone to say it for them — and in snippets short enough that they actually have time to read a piece in its entirety.

Los Angeles Times

An excerpt from And Yet featuring its title poem.

Buzzfeed

And Yet is a lovely and enlightening collection of poetry by Kate Baer, whose short poems explore themes of family, motherhood, the pandemic, grief, love, hope, and more. Baer stirs up a range of emotions through her writing, a beautiful offering of relatability and vulnerability.

BookPage

Kate Baer shares dispatches from the domestic front in her accessible, inviting collection And Yet. In poems that explore gender dynamics and the day-to-day grind of family life, Baer’s voice is that of an intimate, confiding friend. Across the collection, she takes her own measure as a parent and a wife, toggling between self-acceptance and self-loathing, triumphs and trials. She rounds up snippets from horrifying headlines in “Daily Planet”: “Return to school deemed not safe for / Un-vaccinated protests rise as / Hospital beds at capacity in these seven.” To flustered mothers, the internet-weary and anyone bewildered by contemporary life, Baer’s collection will be a balm.

Indie Next Pick

Baer captures our children growing before our eyes and slow reminders of our inevitable deaths. These poems grip you from the start and refuse to let you go. She explores womanhood and wholeness and what that even means. I can’t get enough!

I HOPE THIS FINDS YOU WELL

MSNBC

Watch Kate and Alicia discuss fighting back and turning her negative DMs into poetry in her latest collection, I HOPE THIS FINDS YOU WELL.

The Rumpus

Her latest, I Hope This Finds You Well, is a collection of erasure poems created from letters and notes received from fans, online trolls, and transcripts of current events such as Trump’s pussy-grabbing rant. Overall, the collection reads as a compelling act of reclaiming.

BiblioLifestyle

For four years I worked on a novel that is complete but has never been published. Non-writers are often horrified to hear that because it sounds like a waste of time. Writers understand it is part of a necessary process. Personally I consider that four years to be my less expensive MFA program.

Elle

People have recommended I change my profile picture to a cartoon or not open my DMs or take down any photo that shows my body, but then we get into “she was asking for it” territory, which is also not okay. It’s not my job to present myself in a way that people won’t take offense to.

The Week

Kate Baer's latest best-selling poetry collection, I Hope This Finds You Well, consists of poems she created using messages she received from admirers and trolls. Below, the author of What Kind of Woman names six favorite novels that also take risks.

Today

“I had to sit with a lot of discomfort over who I was and who others wanted me to be,” Baer told TODAY at the time. “There is an expectation for American mothers to act like Deborah in 'Everybody Loves Raymond' but look like Betty Draper from 'Mad Men.' Instead, I found myself looking more like Deborah, but feeling like Peggy.”

The Guardian

And poetic artistry remains important to her. She speaks for her community as well as herself when she says: “My hope is that by sharing these pieces we continue to hold on to the truths that sustain us, and when we do encounter the inevitable noise – we tune our ears to hear the song.”

Romper

Poems like this illustrate the fact that while crafting an online image as a woman or mother is not for the faint of heart, sometimes we can find genuine bursts of connection, simply by having the courage to put at least one side of ourselves out there for others to see.

Entertainment Weekly

The poet's viral erasure poems — Baer takes Instagram messages from disgruntled followers and collages them into feminist works — journey to the page for her next book, which will also use op-eds and court testimonies as source material.

WHAT KIND OF WOMAN

The Observer

When her no-holds-barred collection of poetry came out, Kate Baer was inundated with grateful messages. Why had it hit a chord with ordinary mothers struggling to be heard?

Sunday Times (UK)

Baer’s poems are sharp observations on modern womanhood…

NYT Profile

Baer has found her voice within that, but in subject matter that has not traditionally been considered “high art…”

GOOP’s Bookclub Pick

Fire up the text chain to discuss your twenties, first loves, banning the phrase “getting her body back,”misguided advice dispensed at bridal showers, surprising things children say, not having it all, and why it’s time to buy a hat.

Publisher’s Weekly

“In these confident and fearless poems, Baer suggests that the deepest and most vulnerable love is found in life’s imperfections.”

Vogue

“If parenting is the overt subject of What Kind of Woman, misogyny is its bracing undercurrent. The book overall is an affirmation of a woman’s perspective and experience—and in that way a feminist statement—but then there are more explicit cris de coeur, sometimes playing out on a larger stage.”

Entertainment Weekly

“The poet's Instagram presence has become a balm for many in 2020, and now her lyrical takes on feminism, marriage, and politics come to the page IRL with this new collection.”

Literary Hub

Featuring the editor’s favorite pick from What Kind Of Woman.

Chicago Review

“This powerhouse debut appears at a time when many of us may need reminders of our strength.”

Today Show

“Baer’s debut poetry collection dives headfirst into the intricacies of motherhood against the balance of what is expected of women.”

Romper

“All of us want to feel seen in our experiences, and telling the truth about what is happening structurally lends itself to a giant ‘me too.’ I live for the gritty and unfiltered realities of what is actually going on behind the scenes, in motherhood and otherwise.”

Pop Sugar

“Baer uses poetry to examine what it means to be a woman in today's society, from the transformative experience of becoming a mother to the power of surrounding yourself with female friends.”

Cup Of Jo

“She writes about everything from body image to parenthood struggles to marital sex and just gets it.”

CNN

“Baer’s debut collection of poems takes an honest, feminist look at the roles of women — as friends, mothers, daughters and partners. Take this section from “Robyn Hood”: “Imagine if we took back our diets / our grand delusions, the time spent / thinking about the curve of our form. / Imagine if we took back every time we / called attention to one or the other: her body, our body, the bad shape of things.” Relate? Us too. Which is why we’re picking this up for the important women in our life this holiday season.”