Praise for HORTENSIA, IN WINTER
“‘I am looking for the word that falls between almost and touch. That consideration. It has its own airspace,’ writes Merchant in the poem ‘Exodus.’ It is precisely this consideration that ruffles the airspace between, and within, the poems of Hortensia, in winter; a languorous, circular journey into lineage and inheritance. Among the many voices in this collection is Hortensia, for whom the book is named, and whom the speaker addresses directly in a series of epistolary prose poems. ‘I am growing my hair longer than our bloodline,’ she writes. ‘I am braiding it as a rope to reach you.’ This reaching does not begin with Hortensia nor does it end with the speaker. It is whispered into the corners of history so as to be heard on the other side. ‘Here, the rooms of the body are ravaged by fingerprints & feathers.’ To spend time with this book is to consider this body’s lament, to listen to the silences that shorten the distance between almost and touch.”
– JAMAICA BALDWIN, Author of Bone Language
“What does it mean to be ‘given the smallest room in the house of your own life?’ This collection expertly explores this theme, in unforgettable poems about ancestry, family, and the remarkable struggle of motherhood and womanhood. In exquisite language, the poet Megan Merchant asks the essential questions such as ‘what happens when light reaches the unsayable’. But say it, she must, as we journey through Hortensia’s world and beyond.”
– CONNIE POST, Author of Between Twilight
“In these artfully crafted poems, Merchant seeks understanding of the uneasy present by pulling on a thread linking to the past-Mormon ancestor Hortensia. What the speaker finds as she follows that thread is an ‘echo in a tunnel scrummed with graffiti’-ghosts of stories that can never be fully deciphered, proof of a journey whose secrets will never give themselves up entirely. Some histories can never be fully uncovered, not when ‘women’s voices weren’t allowed to blaze and bright.’ But there, in that enigmatic space of half-knowing, the speaker and Hortensia find one another. Hortensia may not surrender all the answers, but that cloth of her own story wraps around a speaker whose truthful, unsparing poems call to us all.”
– JESSICA WALSH, Author of Book of Gods and Grudges
MEGAN MERCHANT is the owner of the editing, manuscript consultation, and mentoring business Shiversong (www.shiversong.com) and holds an MFA degree in International Creative Writing from UNLV. She is a visual artist and the author of three full-length poetry collections with Glass Lyre Press: Gravel Ghosts (2016), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Award), Grief Flowers (2018), four chapbooks, and a children’s book, These Words I Shaped for You (Penguin Random House). Her book, Before the Fevered Snow, was released in April 2020 with Stillhouse Press (NYT New & Noteworthy). She was awarded the 2016-2017 COG Literary Award, judged by Juan Felipe Herrera, the 2018 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, second place in the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, the Inaugural Michelle Boisseau Prize, and, most recently, the New American Poetry Prize. She is the Editor of Pirene’s Fountain. You can find her poetry and artwork at meganmerchant.wixsite.com/poet.
