Foxes for Everybody

Catherine Pierce is the author of five poetry collections, including the upcoming Dear Beast and the most recent Danger Days. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The Nation, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere, and has won two Pushcart Prizes. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy of American Poets, she served as Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2021 to 2025.

"This slim volume easily held open in one hand will be especially useful for those reading in the middle of the night during a night feeding. The short essays also will be welcome to those experiencing the devastating effects of sleep deprivation who are desperate to feel like their old selves . . . [Pierce] explores how motherhood scrambles one's brain and body into an entirely new thing." - The Clarion-Ledger "Catherine Pierce's Foxes for Everybody is a pitch-perfect rendering of early parenthood, and the writing is so gorgeous it made my throat catch. This book reminded me that our lives are like poems: compressed, shimmering with possibility, and containing so much despite their brevity that we need to look again, and deeper, and deeper again." - Maggie Smith, New York Times best-selling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful"Pierce, a most gifted poet, now turns to exquisite essays to gracefully remind us how time might fool even the most careful and observant. I'm so grateful for these thoughtful meditations, especially because this book is such a gift—prompting us to cherish every cardinal, bee, and cloud." - Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Bite by Bite and World of Wonders"Pierce's Foxes for Everybody meditates on motherhood as an experience characterized by perpetual anxiety, feral love, and constant engagement with pressing intellectual, emotional, and spiritual questions. Vivid and immersive, this book carries readers beyond a mere recitation of the toils and delights of parenthood and into a place where parenting becomes a seed for deep and serious grappling with ethics and social responsibility. Pierce brings together the mind, body, and heart as she reflects on the terror of letting yourself love totally and completely. Foxes for Everybody is a beautiful, wise book you won't be able to put down." - Kathryn Nuernberger, author of Held: Essays in Belonging

• The Next Right Now (1:00 a.m.)Winter Work (2:00 a.m.)Narrative Theory (3:00 a.m.)A Small Defense of Screen Time (4:00 a.m.)An Incomplete Catalogue of My Vigilance (5:00 a.m.)Existentialism (6:00 a.m.)Perfect Sentence (7:00 a.m.)Parenting Metaphor (8:00 a.m.)Truth (9:00 a.m.)What It Sounds Like (10:00 a.m.)Naming (11:00 a.m.)Stings (12:00 p.m.)A Total Solar Eclipse Is Visible from Any Given Point on Earth Once Every 375 Years, on Average (1:00 p.m.)Beachcombing (2:00 p.m.)Carousel (3:00 p.m.)One Man’s Treasure Is Another Man’s Treasure (4:00 p.m.)Resolution (5:00 p.m.)What We Found (6:00 p.m.)The Apologetic Body (7:00 p.m.)The Idea of It: Three Countries (8:00 p.m.)Company (9:00 p.m.)Foxes (10:00 p.m.)Accomplishment (11:00 p.m.)Animals (12:00 a.m.)Acknowledgments