Happiness Threads: The Unborn Poems, Melanie Dennis Unrau's debut collection, is an elegantly spare, thoughtful, and fiercely tenacious meditation on the trials and tribulations of modern motherhood. Written in response to the platitude "Your children are your poetry now," Happiness Threads explores the struggle of a young mother to balance the demands of raising young children with her desire to make art. Unrau wastes neither words nor sentiment; often brief and wonderfully compact, these poems shy away from nothing—delving into every challenge from the onslaught of dirty diapers and spit-up to the despair in the aftermath of a stillbirth.