Everyone I've Danced With Is Dead

In this elegiac collection fittingly titled Everyone I've Danced With Is Dead, Mamie Morgan's poems are exquisitely stitched as they offer up lamentation for, and salutation to, the dead. These are dedicatory jeremiads against loss that flame with anger, anguish, feminism, and, yes, even humor. And though they are underscored in a bladed nostalgia, they are never sentimental; instead, they are "finding new ways to feel" while "flinging every street-facing window open." Swirling in the poetic spaces of this book, are caribou, witches, and chickens as well as cameos by Amy Poehler, Mary Oliver, and Iphigenia; but, most importantly, ascending from the book's foundation is Morgan's incantation for the living and the dead-the clear and sustaining phrase, "I want you alive."

-Simone Muench