Elline Lipkin's Girl in a Forest explores the roles and tropes of women at different life stages, filtered through the lens of the Brothers Grimm tale of Hansel and Gretel. These poems lay a trail of breadcrumbs through permutations of grief as a mother realizes her mortality, a girl awakens to possibility, and an elder reckons with loss. Lipkin invites the reader to step into the enchanted, "the grip of night, / a swarm of marble /feelings set / inside a storm" and to question, reinscribe, and reverse the tensions of womanhood in both the fairy tale and contemporary life.
