In her first magical collection of poetry Jennifer Elise Foerster weaves together a mythic and geographic exploration of a womans coming of age in a dislocated time. Leaving Tulsa a book of road elegies and laments travels from Oklahoma to the edges of the American continent through landscapes at once stark and lush ancient and apocalyptic. The imagery that cycles through the poemsfire shell highway winggives the collection a rich lyricaldramatic texture. Each poem builds on a theme of searching for a lost selfan other Americathat crosses biblical tribal and ecological mythologies. In Leaving Tulsa Foerster is not afraid of the strange or of estrangement. The narrator occupies a space in between and navigates the offbeat experiences of a speaker that is of both Muscogee and European heritage. With bold images and candid language Foerster challenges the perceptions of what it means to be Native what it means to be a woman and what it means to be an American today. Ultimately these brave and luminous poems engage and shatter the boundaries of time self and continent. Foersters journey transcends both geographic space and the confines of the page to live vividly in the mind of the reader. show more