A compelling new poetry collection, focusing on motherhood, the Mideast conflict, and historical settings in northern Minnesota.

Pretend the World confronts our false sense of safety in our self-created worlds. From her St. Paul kitchen to the historical shores of Lake Superior, from an airplane above Bagdad to a clothing factory in Guangdong, Kathryn Kysar pretends the glimmering and the sordid in these honest, searing poems that explore the inequities, cracks, and fissures in women's constructed lives.Kathryn Kysar is the author of Dark Lake (Loonfeather Press, 2002), a book of poetry, and is the editor of Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers (Borealis Books, 2008). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Anderson Center, and she has published poems in many anthologies and magazines, including Great River Review, Mizna, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She serves on the board of directors for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.

Table of Contents: 1/ Last October The Ghost Husband Cutting Bread The Hideaway Salvation Dream Poem Inspected by Number 5 Farm House Girl Ada Asleep The Fruit 2/ Mackinac Island: Spring Melt Returning to Lake Superior Early Spring Berries, Venison, and Ice The Day Ten People Died at Red Lake Under the Plastic Tarp The Burden Holding Her The Effects of Rock and Roll on an Unborn Fetus Bones 3/ Faultlines Flying East I Sit Still in Church with a Pencil Golden Numbers Playing with Planes Diary of a First Grader German Things I Learned from my Grandmother Stolen Groceries Eating Sushi with Robert Bly and Sam Hamill Japanese Garden At Sunset 4/ The Storm Reverend Tennyson Comes to Call Last Night's Dream: Another Love Poem Adrift Chinook Montana 1992 First Kiss Train Stop Frederica, The Aging Flamenco Dancer, Arrives at the Eastern European Resort Love Poem Little Witches Frankie in the Attic The Falls of St. Anthony: A Short History At the Anderson Center