Description:
Emily Corwin's poetry collection, Gossamer, gathers alphabets, ephemera, and playful engagements with art, technology, and mental illness into an intricate lyric archive. These poems assemble foxgloves and gloxinia, pistachio lattes and pasture roses, membranes of data and phlebotomy needles, oleander and Baggu purses, KitKats and kerosene lamps--a "drop-cloth of dopamine." Through glosas, abecedarians, golden shovels, and other formally inventive structures, Corwin discovers new possibilities within constraint. At once exuberant and exacting, Gossamer invites readers into a world that proves the everyday and the uncanny can coexist in richly embellished lyric conversation.
Review Quotes:
The poems in Emily Corwin's arresting new collection are gorgeously, deceptively diaphanous. Around every playful, witty corner, Gossamer's delicious language cuts to the bone, remaking the very idea of "delicate." This collection is wonderfully bejeweled; it's a frosted confection, a closet full of gowns and lush fragrance, that then turns around and stings like a scorpion. Corwin's words demonstrate a zest for and relish in moments, objects, and experiences, and how these impulses sit beside illness, modern healthcare, and our mediated world of screens. In the opening poem, Corwin writes, "I came haunted, stayed haunted," and this book, evoking the surreal, discordant catalog of the social media feed, reveals the rich complexity of holding it all at once. The world within these pages overwhelms with stunning delight and anguish in equal measure.
--Lindsay Tigue