Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses

by Claire Dederer

Paperback, 2012

Status

Available

Genres

Publication

Picador (2012), Edition: Reprint, 368 pages

Description

Biography & Autobiography. Nonfiction. HTML: "The studio was decorated in the style of Don't Be Afraid, We're Not a Cult. All was white and blond and clean, as though the room had been designed for surgery, or Swedish people. The only spot of color came from the Tibetan prayer flags strung over the doorway into the studio. In flagrant defiance of my longtime policy of never entering a structure adorned with Tibetan prayer flags, I removed my shoes, paid my ten bucks, and walked in..." Ten years ago, Claire Dederer put her back out while breastfeeding her baby daughter. Told to try yoga by everyone from the woman behind the counter at the co-op to the homeless guy on the corner, she signed up for her first class. She fell madly in love. Over the next decade, she would tackle triangle, wheel, and the dreaded crow, becoming fast friends with some poses and developing long-standing feuds with others. At the same time, she found herself confronting the forces that shaped her generation. Daughters of women who ran away to find themselves and made a few messes along the way, Dederer and her peers grew up determined to be good, good, good�??even if this meant feeling hemmed in by the smugness of their organic-buying, attachment-parenting, anxiously conscientious little world. Yoga seemed to fit right into this virtuous program, but to her surprise, Dederer found that the deeper she went into the poses, the more they tested her most basic ideas of what makes a good mother, daughter, friend, wife�??and the more they made her want something a little less tidy, a little more improvisational. Less goodness, more joy. Poser is unlike any other book about yoga you will read�??because it is actually a book about life. Witty and heartfelt, sharp and irreverent, Poser is for anyone who has ever tried to stand on their head while keeping both feet on the gro… (more)

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Rating

½ (114 ratings; 3.5)

User reviews

LibraryThing member karinatrandom

I read this book after reading 2 reviews of it, one of which was within the yoga community. I found the narrator easy to relate to, though it felt that the first 2/3 of the book were much better written and more developed than the ending. The story line changes from present to past, and I found the

stories there interesting, but could not see the direct connection to the author's yoga practice. However, it is worth noting that the author candidly explores several academic texts on yoga but does not study with a "famous" guru. Her "yoga mom" sensibilities were much appreciated by me, who does not have an opportunity to travel aboard or live in an ashram.

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LibraryThing member annbury

An interesting idea -- at least to a yoga enthusiast -- and the writing about yoga is also interesting. It was hard for me, however, to be get involved with the heroine, or to be very sympathetic with her problems. That may be my problem as much as the novel's, since I am an old yoga enthusiast

with an old marriage, but other seniors might take note.

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LibraryThing member karenlisa

Poser By Claire Dederer A fresh, witty, secret smile to yourself memoir. This author shares her innermost thoughts and feelings from her childhood through the 1970's and her parents divorce to her married adult life raising two children in Seattle. Claire finds yoga comforting, challenging and

questionable. She intertwines her obsession/love of yoga with her daily life as a mom, daughter, wife, friend and writer. Yoga is always there for her and always changing. Claire is funny and warm and this is an easy enjoyable read that I highly recommend.

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LibraryThing member satyridae

First and foremost, Dederer is a phenomenal writer. Her prose is wry, incisive, hilarious and a joy to read. She also name-checks the Betsy-Tacy books. So I adore her, totally.

The book, not so much. The book is a sprawling sort of memoir that tries to be too many things. The structure imposed by

the chapters named for yoga poses just doesn't work. The material is strong enough that it could have stood alone without the awkward wrangling into shape- this would have been so much stronger, I think, as a linear memoir.

I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it- I did, very much. I just found the structure to be pretty awkward. 3.5

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LibraryThing member hernandk

This book connects the author's life, and her sometimes painful realizations, to her practice of yoga. I found her warm and perfectly relateable. Her family moments feel very authentic, as does her need to do the "right" thing as a mother (all the time!) It does help if you have been to a few yoga

classes, and I like the fact that she is not judgmental about her instructors. For the most part, she is there to learn and she does come to terms with her childhood and her mother in particular. As a woman's story, I was impressed by Dederer's writing, and her observations and most of all, her very real love and admiration for her children.

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LibraryThing member dms02

Heard author interview on NPR and think it may be worth checking out.

LibraryThing member stephaniechase

Suffers from what most memoirs of this ilk suffer from: a tenuous connection to the "theme" and an overwhelming sense of self-absorption of the part of the author.

LibraryThing member mahallett

i didn't really like the yoga connection but i liked this more as it went on. it was quite funny. i enjoyed her descriptions of her yoga teachers. i'm a teacher of adults and it's always interesting to see how other people deal with adult students.

LibraryThing member bobbieharv

I read this right after "Falling for Me," by Anna David, another gimmicky memoir. It's a good, but somewhat tiresome, device - hooking your story to something else: in David's case, the book "Sex and the Single Girl," and in Dederer's, yoga poses.

I've been practicing yoga for over 10 years, so I

found the yoga parts much more interesting than Dederer's self-absorbed not all that reflective life. Without the links to yoga, I fear this might have been quite a dull book.

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LibraryThing member deadgirl

This book came to me at the right time because I'm a new mom with a 10-month old baby boy and have just started practicing yoga. Mostly the yoga bits caught my attention, but I was also drawn to her relationship with her husband, how things could fall apart but not if you pay attention and save it

before it's too late. Her description of how hectic and competitive things are for mothers of our generation is spot on! Entertaining.

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LibraryThing member jeanfeldeisen

Very nice memoir only organizationally about yoga poses. I was especially interested in this young woman's experience as a child of hippie-generation parents finding her own way to raise a child, have a relationship, do yoga.

LibraryThing member Micalhut

making the ho-hum of a very ordinary life interesting.

LibraryThing member sandra.k.heinzman

Loved this book. It was a book club pick for the Women's Adventure Book Club on Facebook. It's a memoir, and this woman can write! As it mainly takes place in the Seattle area, and then in Boulder, CO, I felt like I learned a lot about the culture of those two worlds. This is a book about being a

daughter, a wife, a mother, a writer, a yoga student, and, most of all, a woman trying to be perfect in an imperfect world. It is a truly inspiring book.

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LibraryThing member NBLibGirl

I live in the Seattle area and had my kid about the same time as Dederer, so I can so totally relate. Very funny, very well-written essays about living in Seattle and becoming a parent.

LibraryThing member sandra.k.heinzman

daughter, a wife, a mother, a writer, a yoga student, and, most of all, a woman trying to be perfect in an imperfect world. It is a truly inspiring book.

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LibraryThing member mlake

I started this book beacuse it is another book about yoga (to limber me up for actually doing yoga) but I tore through it becuase I loved Claire's voice and her ideas about being good and being good at something.

LibraryThing member Pferdina

I enjoyed this memoir. The author describes how her life had taken over and then she began studying yoga. She thought yoga was a way to improve herself, but eventually finds that yoga helped her love who she already is.

LibraryThing member gayla.bassham

The fact is, this is really just a memoir of a fairly ordinary life with fairly ordinary events organized around the gimmick of yoga poses. It's well-written but not that interesting. And since my children are, thankfully, long past the baby/toddler age, I am happy to leave questions of how long to

breastfeed and what to do about preschool behind me, and I don't have any particular desire to read about them.

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LibraryThing member teckelvik

I always enjoy memoirs, and I'm kind of on a yoga kick, so I picked this one up. I have very mixed feelings about it. First, I think the structure is contrived. The poses described don't follow logically, and it feels artificial. However, it was good to see her growth.

Dederer's childhood left her

with a host of issues, and through the book, she slowly works through a lot of them. However, she overgeneralizes her experience. Because her mother was flakey, all mothers of that era were flakey. Because she didn't like attachment parentlng, no one should do it. Because she is a follower and does what other people expect, everyone blindly does what they are supposed to.

Once I realized this, and was able to read it as her very oblique way of talking about herself, it was an interesting read. She did grow a lot through yoga, as well as through actually moving away from her odd family.

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LibraryThing member claudiachernov

My primary interest is in motherhood, and I found the book engaging. I wish, though, that the Claire Dederer had spoken even more about being a mother -- especially after she had two children -- and less about her remembrances of her own childhood. Also, I do not know anything about yoga, and so I

probably missed many of the author's points.

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LibraryThing member CarrieWuj

This book had a lot of promise, but turned out to be yet another gen-X memoir of a 70s childhood and current angst over being a parent/wife/woman in the present after all the promise and expectation of equality. Dederer and her husband live in Seattle and are raising 2 kids organically, etc. This

book helps her sort out her messed-up childhood, but doesn't help the reader do much. The yoga aspect is merely a framework for the story she wants to explore. I do appreciate her honesty both in regards to raising kids (so hard!) and her yoga practice (so fraught with insecurity!) There are a few gems: "The universe is made of stories, not atoms." Muriel Rukeyser "Family exists in the non-events: the meals, the arguments, the reading together, the backyard soccer, the getting ready for school." And from the perspective of Robert Spellman, a meditation guru in Boulder, CO on the 'uselessness of being good': "I'm not sure 'good' is a very helpful word. If you're busy being good, you're probably going to miss this. You're going to miss the real stuff that's going on all around you."

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