In a book of seductive poetic experiment, Mary Kinzie examines the stories we tell ourselves. Her short, muscular lines shatter and reassemble such curiosities as an engraving by Albrecht Durer and the portrait of a notorious suicide whose children develop a secret telepathy. In one of her many powerful longer pieces, she collects glittering shards from myriad versions of the Cinderella story, with its conflicting illustrations of maternal love. Her verse moves mysteriously between folklore and urban devastation, between white magic and the concoction of mood drugs in the modern laboratory. In each poem, Kinzie draws our attention to the chinks of light in the dark narratives that surround us, in a language animated by her sympathy and deep moral intelligence.

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