Alterations

Poet Winrock (Little Envelope of Earth Conditions) ruminates on grief through the metaphor of clothing alteration in this elliptical and gut-wrenching examination. Drawing connections between history, fashion, ritual, and literature, Winrock stitches together a narrative about the invisibility of women’s labor and the loss of her own unborn child. One of the book’s threads finds her reflecting on a collective of women who take apart donated wedding dresses and repurpose them. “Like many collectives whose existence and skills might seem unfathomable,” Winrock wrrites, “most of us won’t know about them until there is a need to know.” This leads to fragmentary meditations on a work of performance art in which a black wedding dress was suspended underwater in the Dead Sea, on the making of space suits, on the history of wedding and mourning rituals, and on Emily Dickinson’s life and work. It all culminates in a moving look at “the endless garment of hospital time,” in which the author recounts giving birth to one child after the other twin dies in utero. Winrock’s risks pay off, including the plus signs she peppers throughout the text in honor of Dickinson, who used such line variants “as concurrent alternatives... for + stray signals + distortion + that calculate interior vastness.” Dizzying and deeply felt, this is a memorable account of mourning. (July)