Life on Dodge - The Mineral Point Poetry Series, #9

I realize that being a woman is a lot / like being a planet-I can't decide / what my gravity attracts. I am as helpless / as I am powerful. Poet Rita Feinstein builds a planet from twenty-five sonnets of lost love, and the astrophysics is undeniable. What has more gravitational pull than loss? What is a more alien landscape than the rearrangement of a heart?A strong narrative arc built from verse, Feinstein's debut collection crosses Shakespeare with science fiction to launch readers into a world apart where a newly broken heart is celebrated, examined, nurtured, and let to rage, as if only the atmosphere of an entirely new planet is able to bear the process of healing.
This emotionally generous collection looks at pain and love-fourteen crystalline and confessional lines at a time. Dodge, as the speaker names her planet, "is not Virginia." It is "red because a horse heart / is red .