Dottery

Winner of the 2013 Donald Hall Prize in PoetryThe Dottery is a tale of dotters before they are born. In this series of prose poems you meet their would-be-mutters, the buoys they will know, their inner warden, and the mutterers who cannot have them. The Dottery itself is a sort-of pre-purgatory, a finishing school for the fetal feminine. The five sections correspond to the conceptual set-ups interrogated within. In &quote;wound,&quote; The Dottery is described, as are its inhabitants and their difficulties. In &quote;Dual,&quote; a gender binary is introduced and (hopefully) eviscerated. &quote;Triage&quote; establishes the issues that plague both the dotters and those who would bring them out into the world-specifically into the idea of America (I'm Erica and I can prefer a hummer to the rose parade&quote;). In &quote;Fear,&quote; failed dotters (out in the world) are described in obit fashion. Finally, in &quote;Thief&quote; one mutterer recounts how she stole her dotter (&quote;a snatched piece&quote;) to become a mutter and chronicles both her desires and regrets.