Merrell has packed a lot of memories into his 22 years: In that vague way you know you want to write or paint" ; and his own failed and new relationships. He has also packed away a lot of wisdom about life, death, self-acceptance, and the vagaries of love and lust. Likewise, he has honed his writing craft, and his free-verse memoir is rich with metaphor, words carefully chosen to say enough but not too much.
In one beautiful poem, for example, he alludes to death as that first terrifying jump off the diving board: Would you like to tell us about a lower price? If you are a seller for this product, would you like to suggest updates through seller support?
PUSH continues to break new ground with this remarkable poetry memoir of growing up, coming out, and exploring love. This is a memoir that is lived in moments. The moments you know - when you see your parents' marriage dissolving, when you realize you're a boy who likes boys, when you speak the truth and don't know if it will be heard.
The moments you don't recognize until later - when you leave things unsaid even to yourself , when you feel your boyfriend letting go, when you give up on love. And the moment you get love back. In an amazing narrative of poems, Billy Merrell tells an ordinary story in an extraordinary way.
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There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. I really, really liked this memoir in poetry by Billy Merrell. I found him to be honest, candid, vulnerable, passionate, and just overall desirous to get out his own thoughts and emotions of his life growing into adulthood and much of what that entails Merrell writes on his thoughts of love, gay relationships, intimate times with his family, his desire to tell his parents of his homosexuality, of being a "man" to his dad "before becoming a man.
Dark Matter and Dark Energy
I loved his poem called "Mother" when he talks about the fact that his mother "knew" but just went in a round about way of finding out for sure if he was gay. I found this poem to be tender and fun to read. The line where Billy said, "well, you don't share your toothbrush" had me cracking up! He is so funny and his personality really came out in this book. Some of his poems at least one he labeled as such were written in high school. I taught high school for 25 years, and I can definitely say that he is one talented person!
I'm a little confused as to this book's classification as YA.
Sure, there were sections that dealt with his childhood, but the most straightforward, poignant, and powerful poems were those that dealt with very mature topics: Some of the poems, particularly those dealing with his friend Ben and the dissolution of his relationship, are very touching. Some are a little confusing, and I found myself backtracking to figure out who was being referred to in the poem, what the topic was, and its relevance in that particular place.
Poetry, it seems, is intentionally misleading at times, and I find that to be an annoying characteristic. That said, I myself have a wealth of experiences from elementary, junior high, and high school that are ripe for writing, as they are devastatingly powerful. In my own writing classes and seminars, teachers have literally begged me to write about them, rather than the "typical" YA that I'm working on, which is more fantasy based. The problem was, I didn't know how to do it. I didn't want to write a straightforward story, because the format just didn't seem right. This book has given me some insight onto how to put my experiences onto the page.
So for that - I'm greatly indebted. Especially if I get published. A Kid's Review 5. She said I would like it because I like poetry, which is sort of true lately. But it took me months to find it in a store before my mom bought it online for me I haven't read anything like it before. Guys, buy this book for your girlfriends or boyfriends. I'm 20, not really a teen. But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl. Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap. From the disobedience of the meek. Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind…. Before dawn, trembling in air down to the old river, circulating gently as a new season delicate still in its softness, rustling raiment of hopes never stitched tightly enough to any hour. I was almost, maybe, just about, going to do that. We loved like we fought, slugging our way toward each other, sending up flares to announce our advance.
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Now I ask you: The one in which you learned to be afraid of the boarded-up well in the backyard and the ladder to the attic? The one presided over by armed men in ill-fitting uniforms strolling the streets and alleys, while loudspeakers declared a new era, and the house around you grew bigger, the rooms farther apart, with more and more people missing?
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The photographs whispered to each other from their frames in the hallway. The cooking pots said your name each time you walked past the kitchen. And you pretended to be dead with your sister in games of rescue and abandonment. You learned to lie still so long the world seemed a play you viewed from the muffled safety of a wing. Each act opens with your mother reading a letter that makes her weep.
Each act closes with your father fallen into the hands of Pharaoh.
Dark Horse
The one that never ends? O you, still a child, and slow to grow. Still talking to God and thinking the snow falling is the sound of God listening, and winter is the high-ceilinged house where God measures with one eye an ocean wave in octaves and minutes, and counts on many fingers all the ways a child learns to say Me. Still thinking you hear low song in the wind in the eaves, story in your breathing, grief in the heard dove at evening, and plenitude in the unseen bird tolling at morning.
Still slow to tell memory from imagination, heaven from here and now, hell from here and now, death from childhood, and both of them from dreaming.