We Used To Be Wives

Things I Don’t Want to Share with Him Anymore—
And Other Reflections on Divorce

“ If you have loved and lost through divorce, and have not yet discovered your new path, here is the book with which to start your own personal journey.”
—Linda Hutton, editor, Hutton Publications

If you have divorced or know anyone who has, We Used To Be Wives—Divorce Unveiled Through Poetry will throw light—humorous, moving, angry, suspicious, forgiving, and transforming light—on this common yet life-altering experience. In the introduction to We Used To Be Wives, editor Jane Butkin Roth points out that now, with so many opportunities open to women, we don’t have to define ourselves only as mother or wife. But with this new freedom comes a tendency to minimize the effects of divorce—marriage is no longer all we have, so what’s the big deal? We Used To Be Wives reminds us that with a divorce come losses to mourn and changes to love and hate.

More than seventy women who have experienced divorce contribute to this new anthology of poetry. We Used To Be Wives is organized into sections to reflect the stages of divorce. The poems cover a wide range of emotions—not always pretty, not always decorous—that reveal the true feelings that many women live with before, during, and after a divorce.

But these passionate writings about divorce aren’t whining or complaining. These are spunky accounts that shout out the realities of divorce. Keddy Ann Outlaw’s “Things I Don’t Want to Share With Him Anymore” is a true list of those things—practical and intimate—that couples share, and it reveals what was and what isn’t anymore. Marge Piercy’s “A story wet as tears” is about the frog who turned into a prince, but then, after years of marriage, turned back into a frog. Dina Ben-Lev’s “Driving” sorts out the fact that love can change or disappear, how a marriage can fail, and what she misses from her marriage. Francine Witte’s “Falling” catches a couple’s bittersweet moment of honesty and tenderness, an acknowledgment of the end of their marriage. Joanne McCarthy’s “The Vagina Poem” is a monologue celebrating retirement from sexual obligation.
With poems by famous and lesser-known poets, We Used To Be Wives is a handbook to survive divorce, and not because it’s instructive or therapeutic—though it is—but because it’s a companion along the road. The experiences and emotions found here purge and reveal, explore and heal.

Jane Butkin Roth is a native of Oklahoma City who lives in Houston with her three children. Her writings have appeared in numerous publications worldwide, including Buffalo Bones, Cold Mountain Review, the Houston Chronicle, and theWindsor Review. She has been a contributor to a number of anthologies including Suddenly: Prose Poetry and Sudden Fiction (Stone River Press), Essential Love (Grayson Books), and Mothers and Daughters—A Poetry Celebration (Harmony Books/Random House).
Read an interiew with Jane Butkin Roth!