Winner of the 2022 Gerald Cable Book Award
Persephone Heads for the Gate by Merrill Oliver Douglas
Persephone Heads for the Gate by Merrill Oliver Douglas
ISBN: 978-1-878851-26-0
Paperback 79 pages $20.00
Cover art: Point by Robbyn Zimmerman Tillerman
Release date: October 15, 2024
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Merrill Oliver Douglas is the author of the poetry chapbook Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Baltimore Review, Barrow Street, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, Little Patuxent Review and Whale Road Review, among other journals. Raised in New York City, she holds a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.A. in English from Binghamton University. She lives near Binghamton, New York, where she runs a freelance writing business.
Not dependent on a first-person “I”, the poems in Persephone Heads for the Gate move the reader’s focus from quotidian detail to big idea with confidence. Attuned to the musical quality of language, these poems invite you to read them aloud to enjoy their mouthfeel and sonic quality. This poet creates fresh, engaging imagery that holds tension between beauty and harsh truths. – Ellen Bass
The tender attention with which Merrill Douglas holds the things of this world is breathtaking: "small brown birds/going chink, chink like coins in the ivy," "sun licks billows/of garlicky lamb smoke/that roll above street fair earrings," a toasted marshmallow that "flakes on my tongue with the taste of charred news," or "the sound my grown body releases/now when I unfasten my bra." It is a deep and moving pleasure to spend time in the world of these poems, poems that suggest, no, insist that to live is to "immerse your face in mud and then arise...," to "pinch together thumb and index finger to tweeze/unending filaments of joy from the air...." – Marilyn McCabe
Persephone Heads for the Gate by Merrill Oliver Douglas