Billy Merrell

noreply@blogger.com (Billy) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:56:00 +0000

NaPoWriMo Pledge Drive

noreply@blogger.com (Billy) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:28:00 +0000

To mark the fifth anniversary of NaPoWriMo, Poets.org is raising the stakes of the challenge by organizing a pledge drive—both to offer additional incentives for participation and to raise funds necessary to expand the free poetry resources we offer throughout the year. Learn more >

I will personally be participating in NaPoWriMo again this year, but with a twist: I've decided to challenge myself to REVISE a poem each day, using my 2005 April poems as the raw material for this year's round of insufficient verse. I'll also be posting links back the the originals, in case anyone is interested in tracking the changes. I'll be posting the poems on my Poetry Blog.

Sample Poems

noreply@blogger.com (Billy) — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 14:38:00 +0000

An Excerpt from Talking in the Dark

Talking in the Dark

Before college, before high school, before my voice
finally cracked, before I could do my first pull-up,
and long before my first real kiss, you and I

held the same girls’ hands. First Karen, then Tiffany,
then Jessica. And by the time you kissed Amy, I knew
it wasn’t her I wanted to kiss. I spent the night at your house

and we talked in the dark until we fell asleep. Those years
were short ones, seem shorter now. I hated myself for lying
so still in the bed beside you, as awkward as a body

and as inarticulate. I have never wanted to kiss you,
only hold you now and then or be held. I know now
that you wouldn’t have cared and just wanted to be

trusted. I have pictures of us with girls at dances.
I’m wearing my father’s dress shirt. It balloons away
from my body. But you are right there next to me,

in my shirt’s reach. Later you won’t stand so close, and Amy
will have to pose us, pleading closer. No, no. Closer.

Folding Sheets

It was just the two of us then, a sea of linen
between us, her at one end, me at the other.

And then she said lift and the sheet went up
like a white whale, or a hill rising up to be born

out of the earth, a wave slowly swelling, beginning
to break. And then the air underneath is undone

like hands just after a prayer. Just before
the sheet went slack, she said okay and I would

run to her, to hug her, to press my face into the fabric
of her belly. Held there by the moment memory makes

huge and soft, I fell into my mother as I would the Earth.
She’d say to hand over my corners. Let go, reach down,

back away, lift again. Our sea grew heavy from being folded
and folded. Nothing was like that first white rise and fall,

that first huge ballooning and breathing out,
all space ours and so little between us, then.

My Father, Reading to Me

I was so angry when I heard she told,
not because you knew, but because I wanted to
be a man before I stopped being a man to you.
And when Brian said that you were mad
that she did, that you knew and wanted me to
tell you, I pulled the book I was reading
up over my face so he couldn’t see.
And when I opened my eyes to the text,
I looked at the strange shapes of the letters
and imagined you reading to me
like I have never remembered: me in your lap,
your finger tracing the page as you would
the spine down a woman’s back.

Shhh

You drive us home that night, stroke my leg like one
strokes an animal to calm him, though I am

so near sleep I feel guilty. You say it’s okay
so I tilt my seat back, watch the lights

passing through the side mirror, stars slowly strung
like beads: quickly passing and aligning. Such

ease. Your hand rounds my knee and then back.
Slow pulse of the road, impossible to read

how fast we’re going. It’s okay, go to sleep but
I want to watch your reflection in the windshield. You are

the one who has to get up early. You are the one
who’s been up all day and should be sleeping.

But you say shhh and I grip your hand,
unable to see the road and no need to.

Check out the poems from Talking in the Dark up on the PUSH site.

The Reviews!

noreply@blogger.com (Billy) — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 00:18:00 +0000

Here's what people thought about Talking in the Dark when it first came out in 2003.

from Booklist, December 1, 2003

"Merrell has packed a lot of memories into his 22 years: his parents' divorce and remarriages ('I was seven, and remember you loving each other, then not'); realization of his homosexuality ('You sort of know. In that vague way you know you want to write or paint'); and his own failed and new relationships.

"He has also packed a lot of wisdom into his life -- wisdom about life, death, self-acceptance, and the vagaries of love and lust. Likewise, he has garnered a wealth of 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: 'Is that what Heaven is like -- four seconds and a splash?'

"Talking in the Dark captures twenty-two sad, lonely, yet hopeful years in a life readers will hope will be a long and productive one."

Frances Bradburn

from School Library Journal, January 2004

"An affecting memoir told in verse, this work launches a promising young poet. It is more than the recollection of faltering family life; it also deals with Merrell's acceptance of his homosexuality. It is about sons and brothers, friends and lovers.

"The individual poems enhance one another yet stand alone. The language is measured, doled out carefully, artfully. He writes about his mother: "She's known, she'll say, since I was five/ and I'll want to ask why/ she didn't tell me sooner, but instead ask/ if she's okay." Memories of when he and his father almost speak of his closet homosexuality, and when the moment passes are related in poignant phrases. The poems reveal the author's journey through childhood through the worrisome pit of teen sexuality, made all the more harrowing when a lover dies of AIDS.

"He silently carries around his fear for ages. He writes, "Admitting/ the danger is a danger in itself." This memoir is as difficult as it is beautiful. Merrell writes, "Years later I'll wonder how I didn't know I was lonely when everyone around me did." His sophisticated verse and compelling story will capture attention as it stirs compassion."

Alison Follos, North Country School, Lake Placid, NY

from VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates), April 2004

"In counterpoint to Eireann Corrigan's You Remind Me of You, Merrell lays open the journal of his life, taking readers with him through his parents' divorce, his awakening sexuality, and his quest to find love and acceptance while discovering himself in the process. Merrell's poetry is conversational and questioning, frequently arranged into unrhymed couplets, breaking lines almost randomly on the page. Each poem is a snapshot in Merrell's adolescent slideshow, the same figures sometimes reappearing often throughout the text. Readers are compelled to follow Merrell's hesitating steps to uncover the secret he has kept from himself: his homosexuality. Once it is revealed, Merrell shares with readers the first time he kisses a boy; the ache of unrequited, secret love; and the reality of HIV as it claims his friend Ben and forces him to face his own mortality.

"The poetry in this collection spans a number of years, and the pieces are divided into five sections from the past to the present. Merrell addresses sexuality with a childlike delicacy, choosing to focus on its intimacy and emotion. Reflective in nature, the poems in this memoir will appeal to older teens, gay or straight, who have struggled to understand themselves and how they fit into the complexity of human relationships."

Billy Merrell

NaPoWriMo Pledge Drive

Sample Poems

Recommended Reading

The Reviews!