The Flight Cage - by Rebecca Dunham (Paperback)

About the Book

Poetry. Using the metaphor of a "flight cage," where birds are held captive, as physical manifestation of the space from which her speakers address us, Dunham reinvigorates the persona poem. Instead of "performing" historical figures such as Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth, Anna Akhmatova, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she invites them to inhabit her, flickering in and out of sight, refusing an easy artifice. "In her second collection of poetry, Rebecca Dunham, with stunning formal innovation, parses the blessings and afflictions of womanhood, of motherhood. These poems, brilliant on their surfaces, dark and grave in their depths, will startle the reader with their radiance, and haunt--ghost-ridden as they are--with their otherworldly gravity"--Eric Pankey.

Book Synopsis

Rebecca Dunham's thrilling new book is a multilayered account of the struggles and torments faced by women as wives, mothers, and daughters - a psychological journey in which the poet seeks communion with writers from the past, including feminist pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft.

Using the metaphor of a "flight cage," where birds are held captive, as physical manifestation of the space from which her speakers address us, Dunham reinvigorates the persona poem. Instead of "performing" historical figures such as Wollstonecraft, Dorothy Wordsworth, Anna Akhmatova, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she invites them to inhabit her, flickering in and out of sight, refusing an easy artifice.

A virtuoso of the phrase and image, Dunham displays a daring range of prosody. Drawing upon Wollstonecraft's experimental travel narrative, the poet creates a threshold upon which the traditional "crown of sonnets" can be opened to the sudden breakage of collaged text, remaking both the received form and the now-conventional contemporary experimental poem.