From the Backcover: Erebus, the dark and shadowy outer realm of the Underworld in Greek mythology, becomes a place of transition and becoming in Julia McCarthy’s Return from Erebus. The poems articulate this darkness with such keen and evocative vision and language that it appears to be made of light; they explore the richness of being, the ephemeral nature of our experience, and its inherent grief, where “jays smash like blue china/flung into the trees/and fly away mending themselves”; and you “hear rain and the river/the sound of water walking on itself again.”
“Reading this book makes me ecstatic about poetry.” – Don Domanski
Sample Poem, “The Name That Floats on Black Water”
My hands are empty
full of poverty slipping
threadbare as water
through my fingers
a solid discipline for grasping
the unseen–the nameless measuring
the named:
waterfalling
my heart is full
of space where gravity is homeless
and all the graveyards are lit
like nurseries no one visits
new light rattling through space
like flowers plunged bloom-first
through a bottomless vase
and death so ancient it can’t
remember its own name
the name that floats on black water
as it’s poured into the vase.
About Julia McCarthy: Julia spent ten years living in the United States, most notably Alaska and Georgia. She has also lived in Norway and spent significant time in South Africa. Her previous collection of poetry, Stormthrower, was published by Wolsak and Wynn in 2002. She now resides in Nova Scotia where she works as a freelance writer and editor.
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