Congratulations, Rhododendrons

Mary Germaine's raucous debut collection, Congratulations, Rhododendrons, surfs the confluence of artificial and natural environments and our small but consequential feelings about them. In anxious times, anything can be taken as a sign: a crow, a talking coin, and a news report are all events whose truth (or "fake-ness") demands investigation. Germaine's poems scroll from a shrine in Lourdes to an augmented reality sandbox; from a mall filled with loitering ex-love interests to a fairy-tal...