Open Fire

Even as they consider the paradoxical properties of fire, its potentialboth for creativityand for destruction, the poems in this book burnwith the intent to illuminate the objects of their contemplation.OpenFireconjures both the violent imperative of a firing squad, and the communal warmth radiating from a campfire. In persona and ekphrastic forms,Gorlin jimmies the lock of her identity to pull off daring acts of imaginative immersionand poetic ventriloquism as she adventures into the images of artists, and the lives offigures featured in the Bible, myth, literature, history, biography, fashion design, and current events. Imagine yourself as the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Leda with a surprising assessment of the swan, the World War II photographer Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub, the British fashionista Isabella Blow, and even Death itself mourning over the Covid epidemic.