Nothing Good Will Get Away by Chelsea Dodds

In Chelsea Dodds’s debut chapbook, Nothing Good Will Get Away, we follow the narrator from New York to California as she braids the strands of affection to like to desire—and then to love. Through a lush journey from shallow lakes to dense vineyards, Dodds’s intimate poems enlighten the risks that come with taking a leap at love. A fun and quirky, but emotional read, her poetry strikes deep within my core and reminds me to always strive for my truth to set me—and others—free.  

—Victoria Buitron, author of Unburying the Bones (Texas Review Press) 

The poems in Chelsea Dodds’s beautifully vulnerable collection, Nothing Good Will Get Away, create an intimate portrait of a relationship just out of reach. Dodds’s collection takes on narrative momentum with each poem while also giving space for the return of images and details from previous poems. The overall effect is to share with the reader that swirling internal experience of searching for a partner, seemingly finding the right person, and navigating the circumstances of life that keep the partnership from flourishing. What a gift to offer readers such an honest and close-up view of the inner workings of one heart seeking another, so we can also see more closely our own aspirations for love and connection. 

–Matt Daly, author of The Invisible World (Unsolicited Press) 

With unadorned but deeply evocative language, Dodds crafts poems in which longing pulses and hope flickers even in moments of desolation and loneliness. From the sleepless yearning of “Insomnia” to the quiet reckoning of “The Voice in My Head,” the collection carries readers through the fragile space between fantasy and reality, reminding us that love always leaves us changed. In a world that often feels disconnected, these poems insist on the enduring possibility of finding our way back to one another. 

—Shelley Stoehr, author of Glitterotica (Dancing Girl Press)