Bad Daughter: Poems

Bad Daughter explores misbehavior-its risky pleasures and often tragic consequences-through poems about "bad" daughters, sisters, and their mothers. What happens to the sister who obeys? What if a daughter refuses her inheritance? Can she? What sanctuary and what limits do worship and domesticity provide? Gorham adopts several lyric forms-'morality tales,' ironic prayers, scaled-down sonnets, sharp meditations on concepts such as envy, detachment, and immortality-to show that the self as forged by generations of women and girls is both subversive and enduring.