Everything Is Real: Poems

by Rita Feinstein

For readers of Jeannine Hall Gailey, Emily Corwin, Sasha West, and Rebecca Lindenberg, Rita Fenstein offers a collection of high fantasy, horror chic poetry that mesmerizes with incantations conjuring a lover. Rita Feinstein's high-concept collection of tropey, bent, alternative fairy-tale poems interconnect to uncover the lore of a dark romantic relationship that exists in this world and others, using hybridized formal constraints to make portals and gates. This is careless, dangerous poetry spoken by a cunning heroine who wants us to believe that "all creation starts with love. And/or violence" and to conflate the two until "my name is throbbing in his throat." Slayers are pitted against lovers, and sex is a spell that creates as often as it destroys. "Once upon a time, all women were foxes and all men were hunters," Feinstein spins. "The older the fox, the longer she had evaded capture, the more tails she grew. Our nine-tailed heroine made running look easy. No man had touched her, and precious few had seen her." These are poems full of songs and delicious screams.

Genres: Poetry

90 pages, Paperback

Published October 11, 2022

About the author

Rita Feinstein is a poet and novelist based in Washington, DC. Her stories and poems have appeared in Permafrost, The Normal School, and Willow Springs, among other publications, and have been nominated for Best of the Net and Best New Poets. Rita writes across multiple age categories and genres but always manages to weave in references to her favorite video games.

Reviews

[Jaclyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is beautiful, playful--a perfect world to get lost in. Rita weaves pop culture into love poetry that walks the line between utterly classic and super modern, and the result is an absolute blast to read. By the end, the reader's in love a bit with her Imaginary Lover, too.

[Price Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny, insightful, deep, cheeky, touching, raunchy. It straddles worlds you haven't thought of, but should have, which is why you should leave it lying around to spice up your day... or however poetry fits into your world.