Hortensia, in winter
transports readers on a powerful journey through the lives of women bound by blood, history, and the weight of silence. Megan Merchant's titular Hortensia, an ancestor from a Mormon lineage, becomes both a ghostly presence and a focal point for poems that ache with longing, reverence, and the desire to break free from patriarchal confines. Each poem pulses with raw emotion and luminous imagery, transforming ordinary moments-radishes in a bowl, birds in flight, the silence of winter-into profound meditations on faith, memory, and inheritance. Merchant's work is steeped in the language of epistles, dialogues across time, and moments of haunting tenderness. With her deft hand, Merchant weaves a rich tapestry of personal and collective histories, inviting us to linger in the quiet spaces between loss and discovery.
Hortensia, in Winter
is a breathtaking exploration of what it means to seek and find oneself in the voices of those who came before.