Doll - Paperback

by Elizabeth Mercurio (Author), Eileen Cleary (Editor), Martha McCollough (Designed by)

In Doll, Elizabeth Mercurio explores the appetite to leave life and the beauty that binds us to it. Recalling an early suicide attempt, a grandmother's gift of violets, visiting a famous poet's grave, and mourning the loss of a heron, the speaker of these poems wonders why: "I love life/but sit with bones." Throughout the collection the speaker as well as the multi-faceted characters of others such as Ophelia, Camille Claudel, and Anne Sexton, court despair, transcendence, and the hope of survival through poems both tough and tender. Doll is a meditation on despair and the resilience of the "indestructible" heart.