Rita Feinstein discusses her alternative, fairy-tale poems in Everything is Real

About Everything is Real:

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.

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A graduate of Oregon State University’s MFA program, Rita Feinstein is currently based in Washington, DC, where she teaches creative writing to kids and teens. Her first collection, Life on Dodge, was selected for Kiki Petrosino’s Mineral Point Poetry Series. Feinstein’s stories and poems have appeared in Permafrost, Grist, and Willow Springs, among other publications, and have been nominated for Best of the Net and Best New Poets. She lives with her husband, who is a lawyer, and her dog, who is not.

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Accessibility note: This event is up two flights of stairs and Lost City Books does not have an elevator. This event will be simultaneously live streamed on our YouTube page!