We at CALYX Books are so excited to say that Crow Mercies by Penelope Scambly Schott, winner of the first Sarah Lantz Memorial Poetry Prize, is now available as the Staff Pick of the Month!
Penelope Scambly Schott leads readers through a surreal world in which imagined visitors, realities, bodies, and animals create a ripe emotional landscape. Her depictions of love, family, sex, and death through vivid images of spiders, orchids, bear-husbands, and more will startle and delight the imagination. Upon reviewing Crow Mercies, Claire Keyes notes, “Schott’s inventiveness makes the preposterous seem both real and poignant.”
Crows, Schott observes, are smart and relentless, and they practice a measured mercy. Likewise, the poems in Crow Mercies survey large territories, sometimes with an overview and sometimes close-at-claw. In her review, blogger Stefanie Hollmichel of somanybooksblog.com writes, “Schott also has a strong, firm, voice and an accessible style that invites the reader in to share an intimate moment.” This unique style allows the poet to use her provocative poetry to survey the long course of women’s history as she studies her dying mother.
Penelope Scambly Schott has published three poetry narratives, five chapbooks, and four poetry collections, including Six Lips (2009). She is the recipient of the Hopwood Award, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, a Poetry Society of America prize, and four fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts. Her recent collection, A Is for Anne: Mistress Hutchinson Disturbs the Commonwealth, received the 2008 Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Schott has a PhD in Medieval literature from City University of New York.
If you missed your chance to preorder and save on this fabulous collection, you still have time! As the Staff Pick of the Month, you will receive 20% off and free shipping!
Look for more blogs about our favorite poems from the collection all this month!
Happy reading 🙂
Kelsey Connell, Assistant Director