Instructions for Staging

Poetry. Women's Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. In this new poetry collaboration from Kristina Marie Darling and Carol Guess, the real estate phenomenon of home staging becomes a metaphor for the illusions, and dissolution, of marriage. Or more broadly, of modern life in general, of lives not lived but curated, everything transpiring and shared in real time that seems ever less real. The title of one section is especially telling, drawing upon the realtor cliché to Depersonalize Your Home--a process that must necessarily destroy any notion of home in favor of creating a fictive space, the detritus of messy human lives brushed aside to make room for artifice, for fantasy. On many pages this takes the form of footnotes that suggest an absurd invisible narrative, revealed only in fragments that do not make up a whole--in itself another apt metaphor. This collection is often funny, but in the wry wincing way of experiences that make a good story to recount years after, once survived. To turn these pages is to open the door on a tableau presented by two richly imaginative poets who know where to set each piece for the maximum effect--even if they may leave you looking for a way out of this dream home.