Talking in the Dark by Billy MerrellPUSH (Scholastic), 2003

This book’s a “poetry memoir,” and for that, I like it, though sometimes it feels like too much narrative, not enough image. Merrell writes about childhood, growing up, coming out, falling in and out of love; much of the book is about relationships, whether romantic or friendly or familial. I loved, in the first section, “Folding Sheets,” the description of how “the air underneath is undone/like hands just after a prayer” (p 5). I love the quiet of “Waking the Family,” and the formal play of it: the first stanza’s first line is “I used to love waking first. In the house, awake,” and then the third stanza’s first line is: “I used to love waking. First in the house awake,” (p 17). The first section of “Sudden Arrangement,” with its graceful description of Easter lilies & impatience, makes me think, in a good way, of Mark Doty (or maybe that’s only because Doty’s mentioned by name earlier in the book, in “Canon,”); I like the whole of this poem, the newness it captures. “October” may be the poem I like best, the start of it especially: “Yes, I will take you as a present. It is coming on/ autumn, and I think it would be nice to keep you/ warm through winter […]” (p 89). “Still Life” is another poem that makes me think of Doty, or of Mary Oliver, who’s also mentioned by name, and again, it’s a solid, strong poem, water, light, birds. The last lines of the last poem are a good way to end a book: “Let us catch ourselves opening/ and then catch ourselves stopping/ and not. Let us open and open, / without knowing how” (p 136).