Alana Dagenhart's debut collection is heartwarming, brilliant, and challenging.

About the Author

Alana Dagenhart is a poet, artist, and teacher who is trying to be a better global citizen. She likes to think about the intersection between science, art, and poetry and has been reading lately about time, light, cartography, and mythology. She is studying Latin American poetics. In her free time, she enjoys snow sports, backyard fires, and designing things. She lives in North Carolina with her husband José Rogelio Calvo in a little house with crooked doors and their dog Ela, and cats Paco & Luna. This is her first poetry collection.

From the book

A METAPHOR (OR MORE) FOR YOU

euphoria at the end of the novel, escape

of a dollar matinee, jouissance

of poetry, the melancholy

of leaving, the smell of earth, sun

after three days’ rain, the peace of clean, funk

groove, the enormity of space between wake & sleep

the color of the spectrum, indigo, the smell of a good tobacco

Degas’ ballerinas, a bass riff, the third bottle of beer, heat

in August, or fresh jalapeños, neon, nectarines

the truth of birth, three a.m. with no stars, the softness

of falling snow, the view from the blue ridge where Earth curves