S B Merrow

Everyone A Bell S B Merrow

These are exquisitely composed poems from a gifted poet who senses the dark urgency of our time and lives deeply with the question of what she can say that will last. Merrow's ambitious work is exactly what Jane Kenyon says poetry strives to do: to tell the truth in such a beautiful way you cannot live without it. Everyone a Bell is a book of vivid and bold acts of witness.

-Kendra Kopelke, editor of Passager

Everyone a Bell earns its title. It's a literal literary tintinnabulation; every poem rings, chimes, peals and tolls the beautifully nuanced tones of this collection.

-Nancy Mitchell, author of The Out of Body Shop

Merrow's measured lines carry us until the soul becomes conscious of itself. Her method...is borrowed from the wind in the trees and other singing things. "Would / our last words have been kinder / if we'd stayed on that mountain / where every living thing does/ only what it must to survive?"

-Michael Simms, founder, Vox Populi and Autumn House Press

It's a fine collection...with at least a dozen poems anyone on the planet would have wished to write.... There was the poem that unsteadied me. And the poem I was crazy about. And the poem where I said, my god, I love this woman!-Barrett Warner, editor, Free State Review, and author of Why Is It So Hard to Kill You?