As labyrinthine as its namesake, Dorothea Lasky’s  The Shining  is an ekphrastic horror lyric that shapes an entirely unique feminist psychological landscape.   Here, Lasky guides us through the familiar rooms of the Overlook Hotel, both realized and imagined, inhabiting characters and spaces that have been somewhat flattened in Stephen King’s text or Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptations. Ultimately, Lasky’s poems point us to the ways in which language is always haunted—by past selves, poetic ancestors, and paradoxical histories.  Laugh, cry, or shake your head, Lasky cuts to the chase. — Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, Brooklyn Rail If the essence is not in what she says, Lasky’s poignancy is the result of subtle insights, both endearing and intuitive, suggested by what language leaves out. — Sophie Sills, Jacket2 She will force you to acknowledge the blackness of the blood pumping underneath your skin or the claustrophobia of loneliness, but she will not allow you to forget there is light, and that it can exist in knowing another person. — Kristen Evans, Rain Taxi Dorothea Lasky  is the author, most recently, of  Animal , published in 2019 in the Bagley Wright Lecture Series. She is also the author of five full-length collections of poetry  Milk  (Wave Books, 2018),  Rome  (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2014),  Thunderbird   (Wave Books, 2012),  Black Life   (Wave Books, 2010), and  AWE   (Wave Books, 2007). She is also the author of six chapbooks:  Matter: A Picturebook  (Argos Books, 2012),  The Blue Teratorn  (Yes Yes Books, 2012),  Poetry is Not a Project  (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010),  Tourmaline  (Transmission Press, 2008),  The Hatmaker’s Wife  (2006),  Art  ( H_NGM_N Press, 2005), and  Alphabets and Portraits  (Anchorite Press, 2004).Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Poetry at Columbia University's School of the Arts and lives in New York City. Poetry Hates You Too     A light falls on the bitter afternoon That half sounds like a jetliner taking off Or sounds like all of those unfairly dismissed To their perfectly absurd little rooms for all eternity But I won’t dedicate this poem to them Because the real and feminized world was made for Their sweet countenances Which upturn at the sight of the falling light Which speak of nights spent in a dream No instead I dedicate this poem Dead and useless as it is To the man who sits at his wooden desk Constructing the annals Of that conservative leaflet No one would die for Strumming his computer keys Like the way he fumbles with a clitoris Or who sits in an expansive city lawn with that pretty girl Hoping his particulars won’t find him Dribbling his expensive gin all over her reddening dress This is a love poem for that man That one who bemoans us plebians Who value the wide swath of time That we find ourselves in Rather than value the academic study Of poems that denounce emotion or real feeling For as he sits unbuttoning a pair of purpled slacks He will find me there eventually Sitting with the both of them My arm around them in the photo Sharing a seat with them in the cab ride While he pontificates about his money or his status Once he reads again into the poem That he so wildly admires He will find me there too Rising from the bath Body decaying within the stanzas That he so loves but couldn’t see fit To publish in its own time He may find me too As he is taking down that tattered book While sitting by the fire In search of what words once moved him And with drowsy eyes finds this poem instead Staring back at him With words of immense caution To be careful of the poems you preach Poetry I too dislike it But I dislike him more And I will write it until they take it Away from me If it means I can speak What he never will In defense of it Poetry I hate you too But little man I hate you more So sweet upturned faces to the sun Make the poems be the things you give everyone They must carry on