Book excerpt: In Dear Vulcan, Laura Davenport confronts the vexing possibilities of human intimacy, confessing, “The question is what keeps me coming back.” The crisp narrative style and confiding voice of these poems invite readers to consider the ways in which unspoken expectations shape identities and relationships. Located in settings that range from distinct places in the South, such as the Birmingham skyline or a Nashville liquor store, to the imagined landscape of “City without Women,” the poems in this scorching collection measure again and again the distance between men and women. Throughout its pages, Dear Vulcan captures an underlying tension experienced by a young woman coming of age amid the traditional patriarchy of the South, delineating connections between physical bodies, constructed selves, and landscapes that allow them to flourish. Often beginning midconversation, Davenport’s poems draw in readers with precisely rendered details as they question assumptions about the lines between memory and reality, and between identity and intimacy.