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I love authors who are not afraid to mix things up and take chances. That’s the heart and soul of discovery and creativity, whether or not it works. Explore those edges. Expand those boundaries. Push the borders. Even if the result is failure, the attempt is noble and encourages others to do the same. But Shannon Yarbrough’s mashup of Frankenstein and Emily Dickinson is no failure. It’s not even close. Dickinstein is a wholly sucessful hybrid that gives some new insights and context to her poetry yet provides thrills as familiar (and philosophy as deep) as Mary Shelley‘s original.

Given Frankenstein to read by her friend, Benjamin Newton, Emily Dickinson is inspired to attempt her own experiments into regifting life to creatures of nature. She even establishes a code of behavior for this experimentation and finds that it informs not only her poetry, but her outlook…