About the Book:

“What a beautiful debut collection Melissa Carroll has written! I was deeply moved by her sexy, imaginative, metaphysical poems, filled with wit and insight into the female psyche. Hers are the kind of poems I will read not once, but again and again.”

—Nin Andrews, Why God Is a Woman, Southern Comfort, and Sleeping with Houdini

“The Pretty Machine will quicken your pulse. The Pretty Machine will hyperventilate you. In a good way. Everything about The Pretty Machine is urgent and necessary and damn beautiful. This books traverses eastern philosophy to contemporary ideas of beauty, questioning and challenging what it means to be a 21st century woman in America. The Pretty Machine is a grand debut that will take you to poetic places. Let it.”

—Ira Sukrungruang, In Thailand It Is Night, The Melting Season, and Talk Thai: Adventures of Buddhist Boy