Review of Postacrds from the Dead Letter Office by Dawn Manning Published by Burlesque Press, 2016 It is not necessary to know anything about tanka, an ancient Japanese poetry form, to enjoy the poems in Dawn Manning’s Postcards from the Dead Letter Office. However, she has written a succinct introduction to the form that will enhance your enjoyment. These poems employ often contrastive images juxtaposed in interesting ways and almost always use a characteristic turn or twis

This celestial object looks like a delicate butterfly. But it is far from serene. What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to more than 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The gas is tearing across space at more than 600,000 miles an hour—fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in 24 minutes! A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the center of this fury. It has ejected its envelope of gases and is now unleas