Created in 1843 by the daughter of a clergyman, The Mansion of Happiness was one of the first children's board games published in America. Players encounter virtues and vices on a spiraling track in hopes of advancing to the board s center, where salvation awaits. As the daughter of a miniaturist, Robin Ekiss finds many parallels to her own experience in the moral authority and artificiality of the game. In examining the history of toys and the broader implications of invention and self-identity, Ekiss illuminates both personal and cultural myths about mortality and memory in this startlingly original debut collection.


Toys, for Ekiss, are sinister and strangely intimate imitations of real life. Like the disembodied heads of dolls, the poems pose questions about origins and reveal a surprising darkness in play:


Let's play Elephant, he said / You be the trunk / and I'll be the tail. I was tired of knocking / on Love's door / with my feet in the dust. You be the water / and I'll be the pail
was my only refrain. (from "The Mansion of Happiness")


Like peering into the perfectly still, miniaturized world of a diorama, or into the dark shine of a daguerreotype portrait, reading these contemplative and charismatic poems is an encounter both uncanny and uncompromising.