Sharon Dolin is the author of five poetry books: Whirlwind (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012) and Burn and Dodge (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize in Poetry. A sixth poetry collection, Manual for Living, is forthcoming in early 2016 from the University of Pittsburgh Press, and her ekphrastic collection, Serious Pink, is being re-issued in May 2015. She received the Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress in 2013. She teaches at the 92nd Street Y and Poets House and directs The Center for Book Arts Annual Poetry Chapbook Competition and Writing About Art in Barcelona, a 10-day workshop for poets. This essay is an excerpt from her cinematic memoir-in-progress, Hitchcock Blonde: Reading My Life Through Alfred Hitchcock’s Movies. Another essay from her memoir is forthcoming in Five Points: A Journal of Literature & Art.