In the heart of this finely balanced collection, Jeri Kroll confronts the devastating effects of Alzheimer’s disease as well as the mother-daughter relationship in its final stages. The title suggests something in progress, something that evolves and might never be finished. After all, how can we ever be sure we have summed up the significance of our parents, whom we only ever know in a fragmentary way? Kroll’s “exercises” adapt alternate strategies to capture the changing perceptions of mother and daughter as the disease runs its course. The poems also ask for readers to become engaged, to consider how facing the disintegration of a personality can help to re-educate and perhaps revise the self. With characteristic irony and frankness, Kroll’s poetry moves between vulnerability and distance in its attempt to consider the ethics of using family as “text” while at the same time making peace with the inevitable.
