Alterations

Undelivered Lectures

by Cori Winrock

"In the city where I was born there is a collective of women taking apart donated wedding dresses. Seam ripping and taking off lace, uprooting stitches and unstringing beads—one by one by hand in their spare time."

A collective of women gathers to painstakingly turn wedding dresses into burial garments for infants. “Like many collectives whose existence and skills might seem unfathomable, most of us won’t know about them until there is a need to know,” writes Winrock. It is when confronted with the loss of her own unborn twin child that Winrock learns of their transformative work and begins to create a garment herself—made of language. Threading together stories of textiles and texts, from the first space suits and the seamstresses who made them, to Emily Dickinson’s famous white dress, to the Steinian rhythms of Goodnight Moon, Winrock constructs and reconstructs an essay that might begin to accommodate devastating loss. A work of process and possibility, Alterations enacts the hidden labors of mourning.

Genres: Nonfiction, Poetry

120 pages, Paperback

Published July 8, 2025

Reviews

[andré crombie]

At any given time just one of Emily Dickinson's white dresses is planted in her bedroom like a flag on the moon, + stiff and awkward, trying to float on a breeze that does not blow. + A room that has been celebrated for housing a mind that looked like no one else's mind ever. And this is apparently true, for – put them side by side –+. A mind capable of making poems like lace, full of gaps and pauses and absences. All those variants letting us listen in as she works out a live problem on the page. All those em-dashes with dots over the top, turning connective pauses into birds, inviting us to leap from one space to the next. To keep the vast horizon of her mind in line. As if her words were signals bounced from places more vast than we can imagine—reflected off the moon's surface—returned to us overheard.

+– hold them – Blue to Blue –

A poem-essay reflecting on grief, textiles, motherhood, Emily Dickinson, spacesuits, loss, dressmaking, the moon, Gertrude Stein, em dashes, the plus sign, empty space, and interchangeability. Formally inventive and visually arresting. Particularly striking: the final page, where a poem is reflected across the page with only its punctuation, as the Moonlight Sonata loses notes when reflected off the moon.

[Ashley T]

Absolutely my type of non-fiction. An amazing weaving of different ideas: the author’s personal loss of a child, women taking wedding dresses to create infant burial clothing, the construction of the white space suits for astronauts, Emily Dickinson’s white dress(es), the room from Goodnight Moon, the room of a hospital. They come together in such a beautiful patchwork.

[elaine]

just wasn’t what i had expected when i first bought the book but i think that’s on me

[Sarah]

4.5 stars! wow.

I enjoyed this more than I expected to. A very interesting and unexpected combination of topics, but the author weaves them together and makes it work.

Although the connections are later made clear, I felt the introduction of each new thread was rather abrupt. This was especially true with the topic of pregnancy loss which, as not-history and more autobiographical, seemed a more substantial departure from the previously-introduced topics. It all comes together, so be patient.

This story (collection? meditation?) brais over and around itself. It's not for every reader, but consider it an excellent suggestion for readers open to nontraditional and/or nonlinear storytelling, or who don't feel like they fit in with poetry.

Program topics: one-off book club or weekly readalouds of Emily Dickinson poetry, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, Goodnight Moon, or The World is Round; lace-making; history of space flight; art session or juried art show for the prompt "your childhood room"

Discussion prompts:
- "The great green room was inspired by details of [Margaret] Brown's own childhood. The framed nursery rhymes hanging on its walls recalled illustrated tiles around the fireplace in her and her sister's bedtoom" (p. 41). What details from your own childhood bedroom or home stand out to you now? How would those details likely appear to you now? How would you best capture them in an illustration?