GHOST :: SEEDS

“In Sebastian Merrill’s collection GHOST :: SEEDS, there is the gorgeous clarity of the crossing—the “trans-”—as much as there is an abiding haziness by that self and certainly by others. And, for this reader, there is a haunting sense that I have experienced my own version of that dynamic. The speaker’s realizations emerge in large part through an insistent play with language. From the first poem, the point of view is plural: me with My man’s name and you ‘(my ghost),’Girl-ghost, inverted twin, lost sister. At times, Gender is embodied: my Gender wanders in the underworld. At other times, the ‘you’ enters into a sequence ‘Ghost :: Persephone’ where the you is an interpretation of Persephone who can tell their singular story. A moment of kayaking, for instance, is set against this backdrop and yet Merrill doesn’t retell the myth so much as use it as touchstone. What is missed, found, mourned, and celebrated is a reason for celebration. Thank you, Sebastian Merrill.” —Kimiko Hahn, author of Foreign Bodies, and final judge

“Every poem happens in the body, yes, but the poems in Sebastian Merrill’s GHOST :: SEEDS are doubly embodied. This collection foregrounds the somatic nature of poetry’s choreographed language in order to make flesh an emergent speaking self who cherishes his hard-won existence. Like a muscular dancer whose soft landings turn effort to grace, these poems handle the weightiest concerns with a lightness of touch that amazed me across the book. I need a new word to name the emotion evoked by the lucid palimpsest of transformations Merrill enacts in this celebration of what can only come into being by letting go of what was—or by holding what was, even when it’s gone. Every poem is this stunning debut is an alchemical swirl of eye, ear, tongue, and lung. These poems made me breathe deeper.” —Jason Schneiderman, author of Hold Me Tight

“Sebastian Merrill’s GHOST :: SEEDS sings into a rich tradition of trans poetics while also charting its own unprecedented course through the wilds of history, myth, nature. In one poem, he writes, ‘If Spring comes, / I will know