California (Stahlecker Selections)

Simultaneously sad and funny, Jennifer Denrow’s California, explores the obsessive nature of humanity while calling into question how we create our own realities. Using image repetition as a tool to emphasize obsessions, Denrow’s narrators range from a woman fixated on California to a ventriloquist and his dummy that instructs “You’re allowed to move your lips. / I will teach you to become human...” These are poems occupied with imagination, and how we use our imagination to navigate our worlds.