In this book-length poem, Alsop writes beautifully distilled stanzas that intertwine passion and grief for the worlds within our world that are disappearing. Amplifying the book’s graceful four-line stanzas are Alsop’s drawings—moon phases, concentric circles, and astronomical diagrams—that deepen the collection’s atmosphere of dream and meditation.
For all its attention to brokenness and counterpoint, Mercury Hour ultimately affirms poetry’s power—through dream, trance, and mystical vision—to restore what has vanished.
“There is a spirit [in these poems],” writes poet Ruben Quesada, “that is resilient and thriving. Mercury Hour evokes a central question: Can loss be a guiding light across time, space, and the fractured landscape of the heart?”
“These poems,” adds Eartha Davis, “are an internal rain rivering toward light, then more light, then even more. Yet they are filled by the silence that comes when there is internal singing.”