"In Letters From the Emily Dickinson Room, a most unexpected feat of poetic legerdemain, Kelli Russell Agodon composes on the high-wire of misprision and semantic accidents. She is an aerialist hovering above language without a net, and is possibly the wittiest anagramist in recent memory (pray for poets becomes the story of paper). All I can say is: reader, go with her shopping for coffins. Go with her as she nails light to paper. The rewards are many."---Carolyn Forche<BR><BR>"These are poems of remarkable liveliness. In their wide-ranging wit and passion for language, their surprising juxtapositions of the ordinary and the exalted, and their willingness to foreground doubt in a search for meaning, they show a fellowship with the work of Dickinson that is deep without ever being solemn. Here is a fresh, distinctive voice that is consistently engaging and surprising."---Carl Dennis<BR><BR>"Kelli Russell Agodon writes, "When God knew the gifts He had given me / He said, No give-backs." She asks, "Still, what can we substitute for childbirth? Bamboozle? Inferno? Divinity?" A black bra takes on the power of a celestial body---"no light can escape from it." Playful and tormented, rich in wit, this poet questions the misunderstandings and the miracles all around us. A wonderful book!"--- Peggy Shumaker<BR><BR>"Letters From the Emily Dickinson Room is a bright, funny, touching meditation on loss, love, and the power of words. Agodon's genius is in the interweaving of God and vodka, bees and bras, astronomy and astrology, quotes from Einstein and Emily Dickinson, a world in which gossip rags in checkout lines and Neruda hum in the writer's mind with equal intensity. Self-help mantras resurface throughout as a reminder of the ways modern society chooses to deal with today's tragedies, a reminder that a cup of tea and a positive attitude are not always enough when struggling with life's bigger problems. This is a book that will linger in your mind with its humor, its honesty and insight, and its fervent belief in poetry and play."---Jeannine Hall Gailey, Author of Becoming the Villainess