Dream of the Gone-From City treads the fault lines between worlds: internal and external, natural and constructed, past and present. -Blessed am I, when neither/here nor there- Edelman writes, probing borders between mothers and daughters, lovers tracing words in sand, the living and the dead. Infused with intelligence and sly humor, these poems travel from Malibu to the Adirondacks to Bordeaux, France--weaving disco, Shakespeare, and nursery rhymes into their exquisitely crafted lyric narratives.

These tightly wound lyrics examine the dark history of a dictatorship through the lens of motherhood while invoking the pastoral as a metaphor for loss, and the overwhelming human will to survive what has scarified us. By exposing the named and nameless stolen babies of Franco's long regime, Burwick is able to tap into personal and universal fears of rearing children in the face of violence, forgery, and absolutism.