Poetry All Over the Place

Years ago, when my mother passed away, I restored a dilapidated outbuilding and painted a sign for it that read: The Mary Jane Merritt School For Girls. I think my mother, Mary Jane Merritt Hanna, might have wondered at this, but since I’m the oldest of her beloved Honey Girls, she would have approved.

She might feel the same way about this book: flattered, curious, ambivalent.

Poetry was all over the place in that drafty old house on Main Street with its floral wallpaper, iced-over January windows, steam of Sunday afternoon pot roast. It was in our village too with the creek running through it and the train’s dark whistle out on those empty edges. I grew up with poetry but only knew it in a well-worn book of fairy tales.

Words have always been my way of knowing—writing—my way of giving voice. These poems cover many years, many loves, many stumbled-upon moments of grace. They are all together in this book. For better or for worse, they are here.