How About Now: Poems

“Kate Baer's poems are so full of life—life as it is now, that I can hear them breathing. I loved this book.”—Emma Straub

""How About Now is a balm, a banister, and a battering ram. Her very best yet.""—Catherine Newman

The third full length poetry collection from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of What Kind of Woman.

Renowned poet Kate Baer returns with a bold and compassionate collection that confronts the march of time in a shifting world.

With her trademark candor and curiosity, Baer explores what it means to grow older, to release children into the wildness of their own lives, and to reclaim the ever-evolving self. Raw, luminous, and urgent, this collection channels Baer’s own journey to middle age into poems that are profoundly intimate yet resound universally, identifying the beauty, resilience, and fragility that arrive in every stage of life.

How About Now is a striking declaration of ongoing transformation and self-discovery. From the poet who has captured the heartbeat of the modern woman, this collection reaffirms Kate Baer’s place among the most vital voices of our era.

© 2025 Harper Perennial (Audiobook): 9780063306004

Release date

Audiobook: 4 November 2025