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THE EXHAUST OF DREAMS ADULTERATED, poetry by Jane Rosenberg LaForge
Publication Date: October 15, 2025
Paperback, xx pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-20-8
In her fifth full-length poetry collection Jane Rosenberg LaForge declares “I realize in context / I have given up on significance.” Nevertheless, she takes her readers on a deep and unsparing dive into her family and heritage, admitting that in chronicling the final years of her parents’ marriage and lives “I am looking for myself.” When she asks her father what he is thinking, often he answers “Everything / I would have done differently,” and the dreams of what might have been haunt the inhabitants of her narrative, along with the consequences of choices made by forbears where “we all / would have to reap the results of this whirlwind.” Still, she describes how the sunrises and sunsets of her native California youth were rendered “spectacular in / those days, when dust / was a euphemism for / the junk and alloys we / poured into the air, and for / the stubborn debris of / humans: the skin we shed that insects won’t eat, and the exhaust of dreams / adulterated.” There is, then, beauty in our detritus, and the satisfaction of survival at the end of our haphazard journeys.
Praise for Jane Rosenberg LaForge & The Exhaust of Dreams Adulterated
In her newest collection The Exhaust of Dreams Adulterated Jane Rosenberg LaForge explores her life and identity through captivating narrative poems. Echoing back to Robert Lowell, Rosenberg’s “I” guides us through deeply personal familial memories with detail and judgement. Whether through a failing Christmas tree business, a crumbling garden wall, or a burning California landscape, images of decay echo the destruction of her parents’ marriage and bodies breaking down from illness. In these courageous confessional poems, LaForge’s “ancestors, antagonists, / heroes” shine brightly in all their flaws to become “like stars held in suspension of moments / rather than miles” to the reader.
—Liz Marlow, author of They Become Stars
The Exhaust of Dreams Adulterated is primarily set in a Southern California pocked with amusement parks, the Hollywood Forever cemetery, the family Christmas tree business decimating the land, blanketed in omnipresent smog, fractured by mirages, snobbery, Santa Ana winds and other perils. In this autobiographical collection of poetry, LaForge examines the toll our pursuit of dreams can take, and how these repercussions can impact successive generations. It is both a personal and a distinctly American story of immigrants striving for a better life, trying to avoid “being called out for their fantasy lives as resolute Americans and responsible parents.” With a keen, critical, and sometimes humorous eye, LaForge peoples her book with distinctive family members whose aspirations fade like “trails of lasting smoke and ephemeral splendor.” While the poet states “I was done with dreams,” she exhibits compassion for her predecessors, especially the females who she witnesses rise to plant roses, ride rollercoasters, as they free themselves “from the weight of their genesis.” This book serves as “an urn to tidy up whatever you leave behind,” and in so doing, shows us how, despite our exhaustion, to find ways to carry on and breathe unadulterated air.
—Betsy Mars, poet & assistant editor of Gyroscope Review
About the Author
Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of four previous full-length collections of poetry: With Apologies to Mick Jagger, Other Gods, and All Women (The Aldrich Press 2012); Daphne and Her Discontents (Ravenna Press 2017); Medusa’s Daughter (Animal Heart Press 2021); and My Aunt’s Abortion (BlazeVOX [books] 2023). She also is the author of four chapbooks of poetry: After Voices (Burning River Press 2009); Half-Life (Big Table Publishing 2010); The Navigation of Loss (Red Ochre Press 2012); and In Remembrance of the Life (Spruce Alley Press 2016). Her memoir is An Unsuitable Princess: A True Fantasy/ Fantastical Memoir (Jaded Ibis Press 2014). Her two novels are The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War (Amberjack Publishing 2018); and Sisterhood of the Infamous (New Meridian Arts Literary Press 2021). She writes book reviews for American Book Review.
Publication Date: October 15, 2025
Paperback, xx pages
ISBN: 978-1-966677-20-8
In her fifth full-length poetry collection Jane Rosenberg LaForge declares “I realize in context / I have given up on significance.” Nevertheless, she takes her readers on a deep and unsparing dive into her family and heritage, admitting that in chronicling the final years of her parents’ marriage and lives “I am looking for myself.” When she asks her father what he is thinking, often he answers “Everything / I would have done differently,” and the dreams of what might have been haunt the inhabitants of her narrative, along with the consequences of choices made by forbears where “we all / would have to reap the results of this whirlwind.” Still, she describes how the sunrises and sunsets of her native California youth were rendered “spectacular in / those days, when dust / was a euphemism for / the junk and alloys we / poured into the air, and for / the stubborn debris of / humans: the skin we shed that insects won’t eat, and the exhaust of dreams / adulterated.” There is, then, beauty in our detritus, and the satisfaction of survival at the end of our haphazard journeys.
Praise for Jane Rosenberg LaForge & The Exhaust of Dreams Adulterated
In her newest collection The Exhaust of Dreams Adulterated Jane Rosenberg LaForge explores her life and identity through captivating narrative poems. Echoing back to Robert Lowell, Rosenberg’s “I” guides us through deeply personal familial memories with detail and judgement. Whether through a failing Christmas tree business, a crumbling garden wall, or a burning California landscape, images of decay echo the destruction of her parents’ marriage and bodies breaking down from illness. In these courageous confessional poems, LaForge’s “ancestors, antagonists, / heroes” shine brightly in all their flaws to become “like stars held in suspension of moments / rather than miles” to the reader.
—Liz Marlow, author of They Become Stars
The Exhaust of Dreams Adulterated is primarily set in a Southern California pocked with amusement parks, the Hollywood Forever cemetery, the family Christmas tree business decimating the land, blanketed in omnipresent smog, fractured by mirages, snobbery, Santa Ana winds and other perils. In this autobiographical collection of poetry, LaForge examines the toll our pursuit of dreams can take, and how these repercussions can impact successive generations. It is both a personal and a distinctly American story of immigrants striving for a better life, trying to avoid “being called out for their fantasy lives as resolute Americans and responsible parents.” With a keen, critical, and sometimes humorous eye, LaForge peoples her book with distinctive family members whose aspirations fade like “trails of lasting smoke and ephemeral splendor.” While the poet states “I was done with dreams,” she exhibits compassion for her predecessors, especially the females who she witnesses rise to plant roses, ride rollercoasters, as they free themselves “from the weight of their genesis.” This book serves as “an urn to tidy up whatever you leave behind,” and in so doing, shows us how, despite our exhaustion, to find ways to carry on and breathe unadulterated air.
—Betsy Mars, poet & assistant editor of Gyroscope Review
About the Author
Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of four previous full-length collections of poetry: With Apologies to Mick Jagger, Other Gods, and All Women (The Aldrich Press 2012); Daphne and Her Discontents (Ravenna Press 2017); Medusa’s Daughter (Animal Heart Press 2021); and My Aunt’s Abortion (BlazeVOX [books] 2023). She also is the author of four chapbooks of poetry: After Voices (Burning River Press 2009); Half-Life (Big Table Publishing 2010); The Navigation of Loss (Red Ochre Press 2012); and In Remembrance of the Life (Spruce Alley Press 2016). Her memoir is An Unsuitable Princess: A True Fantasy/ Fantastical Memoir (Jaded Ibis Press 2014). Her two novels are The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War (Amberjack Publishing 2018); and Sisterhood of the Infamous (New Meridian Arts Literary Press 2021). She writes book reviews for American Book Review.