About the Author\nKristina Marie Darling is the author of thirty-six books. Her work has been recognized with awards from Yaddo, the American Academy in Rome, Foundación Valparaíso, the Heinz Foundation, Cité Internationale in Paris, and the Whiting Foundation. She divides her time between the United States and Europe.\nCarol Guess is the author of twenty books of poetry and prose, including Doll Studies: Forensics and Tinderbox Lawn. She is Professor of English at Western Washington University, where she teaches Queer Studies and Creative Writing. She Lives in Seattle.\n“While marriage may be taking no prisoners in this collection, it’s clear that the union of Darling and Guess was a perfect one. They produced a stunning, vivid, and emotionally visceral feminist rumination. They take tremendous formal risks in the construction of this book, and all those risks carry major, hard earned truths.” – Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing 
"In X Marks the Dress, Guess & Darling weave a narrative of love and identity that unpacks itself again and again. Like beautifully wrought Matryoshka dolls, these poems explore the depth and wonder of language as well as its inability to truly define any one thing. Lines and images reappear in new and surprising ways―footnotes, appendices, definitions―that stunningly illustrate exactly how slippery love can be." 
―Erin Elizabeth Smith, author of The Naming of Strays

X Marks the Dress: A Registry

Guess, Carol

Darling, Kristina Marie

Reference

Persea

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Fiction. LGBT Studies. Finalist for the American Library Association GLBT Fiction Award. "Guess deftly performs the parlor trick of handling several different voices, switching fluidly from perceptive Caddie to the clipped cadence of masculine Jo to jaded Selena. This Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore for the 1990s celebrates the differences between people without fudging the loneliness that these entail. Guess's attempts to put a Midwestern spin on magical realism are blessedly rare: in a book loaded with so many natural surprises, any supernatural extras would be gilt on the lily"—Publishers Weekly.

Literature & Fiction

United States

Calyx Books

Fiction. LGBT Studies. Finalist for the American Library Association GLBT Fiction Award. "Guess deftly performs the parlor trick of handling several different voices, switching fluidly from perceptive Caddie to the clipped cadence of masculine Jo to jaded Selena. This Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore for the 1990s celebrates the differences between people without fudging the loneliness that these entail. Guess's attempts to put a Midwestern spin on magical realism are blessedly rare: in a book loaded with so many natural surprises, any supernatural extras would be gilt on the lily"—Publishers Weekly.

Poetry. LGBT Studies. In an exquisite and powerful first collection of poetry Carol Guess blends musical language with social commentary. Her poems focus on the lives of women struggling to put words to the unspeakable. "What a wonderful collection! These poems are full of lush music and passionate emotion"—Alice Bloch.

Femme's Dictionary

History & Criticism

Poetry

Poetry. Set on the margins of Seattle, beneath bridges and on the banks of waterways, in strip clubs and flooded farmland, the prose poems in TINDERBOX LAWN illuminate the intersection of domesticity and bohemia, orthodoxy and passion. Each untitled block of prose constitutes a novel-in-miniature, with shadow characters and shards of plot. The intensity of Carol Guess's poems builds through lyrical language and recurring images, capturing the moment when the small mad heart at the center of things stalls mid-tick. "This is such deep, rich writing. TINDERBOX LAWN feels like dreams you forgot as you walk through your day but it's your life. I mean we never think as deeply as we live and Carol Guess tries to braid those strands and succeeds. I love being in this work"—Eileen Myles.

Tinderbox Lawn

Rose Metal Press

Poetry. Women's Studies. "In X MARKS THE DRESS, Darling &amp; Guess weave a narrative of love and identity that unpacks itself again and again. Like beautifully wrought Matryoshka dolls, these poems explore the depth and wonder of language as well as its inability to truly define any one thing. Lines and images reappear in new and surprising ways—footnotes, appendices, definitions—that stunningly illustrate exactly how slippery love can be."—Erin Elizabeth Smith "X MARKS THE DRESS: A REGISTRY by Kristina Marie Darling &amp; Carol Guess presents the scintillating variables of time and its complex philosophical relationship with experiential space. These poems spark an incandescent fire of imagination in an enormous tonal range. Positioned on both sides of the mirror at once, watching reflections of ever-changing backgrounds of relationships and marriage. Like dreaming about having a dream this book cajole, beckon and posit in transcendent, expressive, and provocative words. Ultimately, the words never fill the void. Instead, they take us deeper and deeper down to a dark and disorienting place that continually excites the reader with its possibilities. This is an excellent work from two wonderful poets."—Geoffrey Gatza "In Kristina Marie Darling and Carol Guess's collaborative book, X MARKS THE DRESS: A REGISTRY, the reader receives a delicious catalog of wants. The cohabitation of idealized domestic bliss and the wild and unwilling spirit of individuality split the difference. The newlyweds divide the baby in half. The unspoken gets footnoted. The remnants get erased and placed in the appendices. In glorious sequences of riffs, flirtations, recombinations, and dances, Darling and Guess's collaboration intoxicates. Though the wedding china may get smashed against the trees, and though the stiletto heels may get broken, the moments in these lyrical vignettes will be long enshrined "on a red satin pillow."—Oliver de la Paz "These poems are arch, eyeing the cake. They undo us as we enter their rooms, our lace caught on the door knob, our mouths dripping generations of nameless desire. Each poem is a strand that keeps us tied to the marriage ritual, yet the reader is left diced up and served, simmered in pink, skeptical of the heart yet wanting to eat another's. 'I love you more because I love you both' is the song we dance to, the cadence that questions what a bond is, and between whom, and whether it is possible to love at all (when love is a mirror in a room of mirrors)."—Emily Kendal Frey

Gold Wake Press

As the various inhabitants of a small midwestern town reminisce about Dell, a female taxi driver who dies in a highway accident leaving behind two lovers--one male, one female--a revealing portrait emerges of Dell, her life, and her relationships. Simultaneous. Tour. IP.

Seeing Dell

Cleis Pr

Dell is a taxi driver who lives on the outskirts of town memory until she leaves behind two lovers - one male, one female - and a small town populated by characters whose desires to touch each other - and in odd ways, to touch Dell herself - are thwarted by their human inability to know themselves or reveal themselves to each other. Dell is revealed to us through the stories of townspeople whose obsessions - both petty and grand - are told with Carol Guess's remarkable clarity and thoughtfulness.

Poetry. "These prose poems are the best kind of revolution: sly and funny, subversive and wise."—Sarah McCarry "Like everyone else, I am desperate to get it right, to know how to dress for the Ouija board or how to stop being in love with people I'll never meet. The volume of what we don't know, what we need to know NOW could drown a lonely surfer, but Guess &amp; Olszewska have the skills and the code that will bring us back to life. They comb, channel, and distill the ether. They answer the questions beating so secretly in our chests, we didn't know to ask them. They build a stunning pedagogy of the surfpressed. I would like to live in the world where these were the answers and allegories Googling provided. Let's put on a dramatic amount of make-up, set a small fire for the smell of singed crosshair, and tell the birds nesting in the eaves that it's over. This book emits a peculiar, beguiling, electric calm."—Danielle Pafunda

How to Feel Confident with Your Special Talents

Computers & Technology

Networking & Cloud Computing

Black Lawrence Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Guess, Carol. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Guess, Carol

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Guess, Carol. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

X Marks the Dress: A Registry

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Femme's Dictionary

Femme's Dictionary

Tinderbox Lawn

X Marks the Dress: A Registry

Seeing Dell

Seeing Dell

How to Feel Confident with Your Special Talents