"Gittings has masterfully crafted an emotional collection dealing with the highs and lows of abuse and addiction, exploring their complex effects on a woman's sexuality and psyche in well-crafted poems - neither preaching nor condemning, but finding hope and resurrection after years of conflict. A most important offering by this young and gifted poet." -Mark Fishbein, Chancellor, Poetry Academy of Poetry Global Network
In The Dark Dance, Dana Gittings navigates the intricacies of shame, growth, and freedom after escaping a vicious relationship with alcohol in her young adult years. These 65 poems dance brilliantly through a grisly inferno of blacked-out blunders, laying bare their collective damage and shining a light on the complexities of healing.
Finally breaking away from the bottle, our poet-protagonist is soon lost anew. The same tendency toward obsession and compulsion that steered her to substance abuse now leads her to search sobriety's "pink cloud" for human connection and validation. Gittings comes up empty-handed, exasperated. So she looks within, channeling the more lasting, more compassionate pulse of poetry to find direction and empowerment. With us at her side, she writes her way back to self-love.
With a hypnotic mastery of language and sound, Gittings writes with a vulnerability that will haunt readers long after this book is put down. Her incisive, confessional poems steer from the depths of drunken self-fragmentation to the transcendent heights of sober self-integration - prompting us to reflect on our own dark forces. She explores a strained and ambiguous relationship with the psyche, forced to reckon with its past. Avoidance is impossible... attempting it, ill-advised.
Employing sensuous imagery of witchcraft, fire, water, serpents, moons, and more, Gittings calls on us to unearth our demons, summoning instinct and incantation to find a new source of elation and magic. The Dark Dance searches for beauty in destruction. It never forgets or amends, but embraces the inner darkness... dancing in the black of night. And only there, it finds the light.
Gittings also authors an educational blog on alcohol sobriety in which she uses her own experiences and background in psychology to break down various topics of interest to the sober and sober-curious. Each chapter of The Dark Dance is tied to a related post on SomeLikeItSober.com for readers to explore.
"For anybody who has lifted a glass to life; their first, their last, or both." -Keith David Parsons, Board Member, DC Poetry Collective
"A stunning portrait of growth, shame, and personal liberation." -Alyson Moore
Read more featured reviews: danagittings.com/the-dark-dance
