MER Bookshelf – December 2025
Curated by Melissa Joplin Higley
New or forthcoming books of note (in order of date of publication).
Bonnie Naradzay, Invited to the Feast, Slant Books, October 2025, poetry
Bonnie Naradzay’s journey—as mother, professional, teacher, and longtime volunteer, leading poetry sessions in prisons, a retirement community, and among the homeless—has gathered much of both the lost and found, culminating in the publication of Invited to the Feast, a collection of poems and literary debut coming in her eightieth year.
Subhaga Crystal Bacon, A Brief History of My Sex Life, Lily Poetry Review Books, January 2026, poetry
A Brief History of My Sex Life is a poetic memoir that traverses the self: it begins in the terrain of childhood and arrives at a profound peace. Subhaga Crystal Bacon captures the complications of family inheritance while presenting the detailed richness of Americana. Beneath these deeply textured poems is an abiding search for self and an unrelenting honesty. Subhaga narrates their own story with freedom, precision, and humor: “It’s Shakespearean; I’m a man / disguised as a woman playing a boy. / What a precious, private thing it is.” A Brief History of My Sex Life reminds us that poetry has the power to investigate the innermost part of ourselves. Subhaga claims that power. “Now do you see?” they ask, “You can love what you are / without flinching.” –Jessica Cuello, author of Yours, Creature
Chloe Yelena Miller, Perforated, Lily Poetry Review Books, January 2026, poetry
Chloe Yelena Miller’s second full-length poetry collection Perforated is about the grief of private and public losses. Architecture and light frame loss through the lens of motherhood, mortality and love from the United States to Italy. Covid, immigration, climate change and school shootings sound alarms in Perforated. Woven through the collection is “New York City,” a long poem broken into smaller pieces reflecting on 9/11 as it continues to reverberate in the author’s life. Public events transform into private experiences as the narrator searches for strength. Miller reflects on her family’s Italian origins and her time in Italy. As the final poem “Palimpsest” offers, we can make our worlds visible through art and light as we build upon the past. We are mortal and fragile, but we can remember each other and persist.
Megan Gannon, Dispatch From Every Second Guess, Dzanc Books, March 2026, poetry
A verse-memoir spanning the breakdown of a marriage and the resulting wide-open horizon of single motherhood, Dispatch From Every Second Guess explores how we negotiate the present in the light of the past, how our lingering resentments limit our attentions, and how old wounds reopen in new ways. Gannon’s life is layered with tensions. The tension of being a white adoptive mother to a Black son. The tension of healing from a failed marriage. The tension of supporting a partner through mental health crises. The tension of mothering the partner’s child in the shadow of a fraught relationship with one’s own mother. And the tension of admitting ugly truths in a genre that often demands beauty, especially from women poets.
Rebekah Denison Hewitt, Creature in Bloom, University of Wisconsin Press, Spring 2026, poetry
It is rare to find a collection so grounded in the manifold meanings of motherhood—in all its anxiety, ambivalence, and joy. From the aches and fears of pregnancy, through the pain and relief of childbirth, to the perplexing questions and worries of parenting, Rebekah Denison Hewitt grapples with what it is to make a human (and to sometimes lose one), “the baby a creature / in bloom / the mother / a lotus eater.” Closing with the counsel “Do not be afraid. / Rinse your heart out. Proceed,” these poems give readers many reasons to fear—health issues, genetic deformities, postpartum depression, gun violence, and car accidents. Yet always lurking underneath are light, optimism, and a stubborn willingness to soldier on. Exploring the stories, myths, and personal histories that shape the experience of modern motherhood, Creature in Bloom expands the conversation around what it means to be a mother.