The Laughing Game by Marianne Kunkel

“These are wonderful poems, strong, tight, intimate, made bright with hard-edged humor. They look at real people in real situations, moving patiently through their fragile lives, and Kunkel tells their stories one day, one living word, at a time.”

— Dorianne Laux

“A wheelchair abandoned in a parking lot. A doomed dog drinking from a gutter. Memories of an absent father. ‘Lately, I have been looking for myself in everything,’ writes Kunkel in this moving debut collection, her mind casting back to recollections of childhood, troubled parents, half-understood rites of passage, and moments of sadness, tenderness, or confusion. For Kunkel, memory provides much more than an opportunity for dramatic narrative or self-expression. It offers, instead, a crystallization of a timeless self in all its ambivalence, nuance, and complexity. This is a marvelous collection by a very skillful poet.”

— Kevin Prufer

“The cheerful title of this collection belies its deeply serious intent–to illuminate the darker corners of childhood and their inevitable legacy in adult experience. Without a scintilla of sentimentality, Kunkel paints memorable portraits of the author as a young girl…Her formal dexterity is simultaneously powerful and unassuming, suggestive of the steel beneath the vulnerability so beautifully portrayed in this marvelous debut collection.

–Sidney Wade

Rating:  ***** [5 of 5 Stars!]