Download or read book Poems for a Phantom Lover written by Jennifer Dickson and published by The Porcupine's Quill. This book was released on 2023-07-21 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting with the reflecting pool beneath the Unicorn Amphitheatre on Isola Bella, Poems for a Phantom Lover pairs a selection of short poems with photographs culled from decades’ worth of research into the structure and symbolism of historic gardens, a study that has led Jennifer Dickson to question conventional assumptions about the place of gender identity and sexual role-play in the vivisection of an earthly paradise. In the collection, sunlight caresses the timeworn fountains, pagodas and loggias populated by gods and idols, while ill winds rasp among the altars and monuments whose stones are steeped in blood. These are gardens of desire, of longing and betrayal, where torment festers under the flagstones and ‘the wounds of love / are suppurating stone.’