Carolyne Wright’s Mania Klepto: The Book of Eulene records the adventures of a doppelganger. Wright, who has published five books of poetry, including Seasons of Mangoes and Brainfire, winner of the Blue Lynx Prize and the American Book Award, as well as three volumes of translation from Bengali and Spanish, describes Eulene in the essay “Disquieting Muse: The Eulene Series” as having arrived as a “nameless, amorphous” figure “cropping up on otherwise well-behaved poetic exercises” when Wright was in Syracuse University’s writing program. Despite her genesis in a writing program, Eulene has no near literary relations. Berryman’s Henry Pussycat may be an uncle thrice-removed, but no closer—Eulene gets along fine without guilt.
