Search for a Velvet-Lined Cape

Poetry. "Escape artists of many stripes populate these pages: reflective oddballs, the curious, the strangely gifted, the vulnerable. We witness ineffable, transformative moments in the lives of airborne saints or Houdini. Or we're transported to the Bigfoot Car Wash, or to an orgy of dead poets. Manwaring's delightfully inventive poems bring to mind Steven Millhauser's fiction and the work of magician Ricky Jay in their love of marvels and illusions, rendered with sly intelligence. Teetering between pathos and brightness, these poems simultaneously deconstruct and enact enchantment."—Amy Gerstler