Fabulous Essential

In her recent chapbook Fabulous Essential, Niina Pollari uses everyday objects as a point of entry to significant questions about femininity, romance, and relationships. Written as a series of stunning, image-rich lyric poems, Pollari's meditations on domestic life offer subtle critiques of gender hierarchy while at the same time challenging the predominantly male artistic tradition that her generation has inherited. As the speakers of these poems struggle to negotiate received ideas about female identity with modern life, Pollari simultaneously invokes and questions a range of literary conventions, thus offering readers a skillful matching of form and content. --Kristina Marie Darling.