Welcome, Stranger: Poems of Making and Keeping Our Children by Melissa Weaver

In her debut collection, Melissa Weaver opens the doors to poems that are devout with grace and precision. Each word is crafted so carefully, like a rosary bead, or altar stone, for the reader to collect along the way until they are fully grounded in the world of motherhood and faith that the poet creates. Her ability to listen so deeply and pull poems from the most unlikely depths is startling. As she explains, “When I get on eye-level to find what fell from a diaper, I swear there must be a sonnet in here somewhere.”. This is not only a lesson for the reader—how to pick from the body, stones and ash, to make a poem—but it also a journey where, along the way, “We fade”, but as the poet promises, “in our breaking, there’s an ember.”.

–Megan Merchant, author of “Before the Fevered Snow” (Stillhouse Press, 2020)