In her latest chapbook, SEWING LESSONS, Judith Rypma weaves word tapestries that reveal and respond to the patterns of our lives. Weaving and embroidering have served as a metaphor for creation for centuries, and each poem beautifully follows that tradition. These tightly crafted poems trace women’s progress from ancient looms and spindles to more modern struggles with pleated skirts, and botched home economics classes. Like the Three Fates, the speaker measures and cuts the threads of life in a poignant and powerful examination of how the lives of women and, as importantly, female artists, are stitched together.