Publishing Genius Press
68 pp/$12.00

Review by Kate Schapira

The first time Emily Dickinson appears in Chris Toll’s collection of poems, she’s writing an angry letter to Arthur Rimbaud about the FitzGerald translation of the Rubaiyat. The second time, she pays a fangirl visit to Edgar Allan Poe, hitches a ride to 2002 in his time machine, and leaves a poem in a Baltimore bookstore. Its first stanza reads

I’ve lost Everything – I’ve lost Everything Twice.
I bought a Sniper Rifle from a man named Don.
I’ve got a Holy Bible gnawed by mice –
I want to dance like they did in Babylon –

I was just talking with someone about how dashes aren’t what makes an Emily Dickinson poem; they dress a poem up as an Emily Dickinson poem. That made me wonder what I’d put on a poem to make it look like it came from Disinformation Phase. Continue reading →