Wrested from the coppery, keen claws of existential extremity, Blessings and Inclemencies, Constance Merritt’s second collection of poems, is conventional in its forms and radical in its reaching back to the ground of being and to the originality and immediacy of our first encounters with language. Forgoing the common hedge of irony, these poems, without apology, place their bets on elemental language, intentional grace, and tradition in all its fruitfulness and freight. By turns passionate and distant, these poems manage at once to ensnare and elude us, and in their urgent quest for clarity seldom fail to compel us.
Constance Merritt's poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and the New Yorker, among other publications. A Protocol for Touch, her first poetry collection, was the 1999 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry selection and a finalist for the William Carlos Williams Book Award. Merritt lives in Lynchburg, Virginia.
This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Strictly Necessary Cookies
Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.
If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.