Dummy Ventriloquist - Michelle Bitting

In her latest chapbook Dummy Ventriloquist Michelle Bitting serves up a dynamic panoply of forms ' voices, wielding the sonnet, prose poem, ekphrastic modes and more in work that beguiles ' thrills as it deftly embodies memory ' channeled persona. With an eye for invention and ear for musical precision, this poet chisels lyric-narrative gems out of chaos in her ongoing mourning ' celebration of lost landscapes ' family. All this in the spirit of art's capacity to help us survive the present, animate the future, and re-imagine the past. The braided turns of dream, verse, museum piece, film, ' history skillfully excavate, pay homage, and invent through imagined convergences ' wordplay. Joan Didion, Film Noir, nocturnes, dead brothers, pubescent adventures, Marie Curie, the ocean, elegy, cemeteries ' family luminaries, casualties of politics, pandemic, and a fierce embrace of her beloved sons ' devoted husband keep this Los Angeles poet's urban ' imaginal terrains piercing and lively.