The Dark's Humming

These poems seem to come to us from across water, like Old World symphonies that arise from the body’s magnificent frailty, its ability to chronicle and recall people and places we’ve long since forgotten. Yet Megan Merchant’s voice is fresh and alluring, and that’s because she knows, honors, and echoes the writers who came before her—don’t be surprised if you hear Emily Dickinson, say, or Virginia Woolf. Like all the great artists, Merchant starts “like a dog digging a tunnel,” as one of these beautiful poems says, “knowing nothing about the other side, / scampering to catch the fading smell of home.”

— David Kirby