Miss Unthinkable

Poetry. Who is MISS UNTHINKABLE? In this latest collection from Chicago poet Pamela Miller, she's a shape-shifting sorority of mysterious, funny and wise female characters who don't let anything get the better of them—from undependable husbands and lovers to breast cancer, aging or even death. The women who strut their stuff in these poems wear "electric sunglasses" and "bracelets of miracles and plagues"; they "thunder up the stairs of desire" and write love letters "juicy as mangoes"; and when confronted with their own mortality, they defiantly "jitterbug with Death in some roadhouse dive," then "run war-whooping into the light." In poems that range from the fantastical ("On Our Honeymoon in New York City, My Husband Turns into Times Square") to the autobiographical (the 11-poem sequence "The Body at Fifty"), this book chronicles and celebrates the resilience of the female spirit with equal parts respect and rowdiness.