Emotion Industry

by Tracy Dimond

102 pages, Paperback

Published October 15, 2024

About the author

Tracy Dimond is a 2016 Baker Artist Award finalist. She is the author of the full length poetry collection, Emotion Industry (Barrelhouse), and four chapbooks, including: TO TRACY LIKE / TO LIKE / LIKE (akinoga press) and Sorry I Wrote So Many Sad Poems Today (Ink Press), winner of Baltimore City Paper’s Best Chapbook. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts from the University of Baltimore.

Reviews

[Kristen Felicetti]

Emotion is industry, everything is industry, in life it all just feels like a little bit of work, doesn't it? If you've ever felt this way, Tracy Dimond is your guide, with her sharp poetry collection.

Some favorite lines:
—making someone food says I like you enough to want you alive
—I'm approaching an age when getting it together is a war on authenticity.
—People ask where poems come from and I say I let them become then I edit a new reality.
—No one talks to men about having the face for short hair.
—My five-year-plan is to not get hit by a car. My twenty-year-plan is to stay the same size so I don't need to buy new clothes when everything in my closet becomes vintage.
—Books could not exist without the support surrounding them.

[Courtney LeBlanc]

A collection of poems about the female body, chronic illness, consumerism, and survival.

from The Physical Space of Words and Patterns: "The space we inhabit is vital. I checked my watch. I just checked my watch. I didn't countdown on NYE. My resolutions care too much about time. Your two cents ring like an empty water glass."

from Die Rhymes with Die: "Dyed my hair to match my soul / has better reception than / dyed my hair to match my period. / How's that for a new blood metaphor?"

from Favorite: "I would feel settled / if you put your tongue in my spine. // Living forever / is reason to procrastinate. // For best results, / forget about gravity."

[Tim Paggi]

Mind blowing. If contemporary femininity can be visualized as a night sky, then Tracy Dimond’s poems connect its most disparate stars into constellations. Reading and rereading the pieces in Emotion Industry, I’m amazed how the sharp turns of thought urge me to consider the relationships between rocks, bones, clothing, music, sensuality, medicine, aging, sexism, money and more. That they do so with such humor and precision is a bonus. A collection to be revisited for sure.

[Tracy]

I mean, I wrote it!

I'll leave you with these lines from RESIST DANCE / RESISTANCE, a poem heavily inspired by how Dorothea Lasky references her previous work:

There is no comment card on my book,
but you can write about it on your blog, or better yet,
please write a review for a major publication
We cannot touch our idols, but they teach us

[Tonee Mae Moll]

I blurbed this book, and I mean what I said about it: “Tracy Dimond’s poems come from the place where ‘it girl’ and riot grrrl meet. They are smart, introspective, funny, and unsettling all at once—both wry observations and wails into the mic from a brilliant feminist voice that takes poetry, pop culture, and affect as seriously as they deserve to be taken.”

[Jenny]

Such brilliance!