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Surrender
Whether it is a mother putting her child on the school bus for the first time in “Surrender” or finding love despite the interruptions of everyday life in “Louisville, KY, USA,” Ellen Birkett Morris’s poems explore the small but transcendent moments that define our lives.
“This book emerged from losing my father, the changes brought by reaching my mid-forties and facing some of the hard realities of life. Ultimately it is a celebration of life, love and learning to let go,” said Morris.
“In Surrender, Ellen Birkett Morris shows us love and loss from adolescence to age in images that pierce to the heart: a long-married couple makes love on “sheets / soft with age,” a daughter waves from her first school bus with a “purple gloved hand,” a poor man dreams “worn shoe-leather dreams.” These short poems sometimes seem deceptively quiet, but each shines as softly burnished as a pearl,” said Sherry Chandler, author of Weaving a New Eden and Dance the Black-eyed Girl.
“The poems in Surrender are about growing up, grieving and embracing a life that is changed, but none the less sweet,” said Morris.
“This book emerged from losing my father, the changes brought by reaching my mid-forties and facing some of the hard realities of life. Ultimately it is a celebration of life, love and learning to let go,” said Morris.
“In Surrender, Ellen Birkett Morris shows us love and loss from adolescence to age in images that pierce to the heart: a long-married couple makes love on “sheets / soft with age,” a daughter waves from her first school bus with a “purple gloved hand,” a poor man dreams “worn shoe-leather dreams.” These short poems sometimes seem deceptively quiet, but each shines as softly burnished as a pearl,” said Sherry Chandler, author of Weaving a New Eden and Dance the Black-eyed Girl.
“The poems in Surrender are about growing up, grieving and embracing a life that is changed, but none the less sweet,” said Morris.
24 pages, Unknown Binding
First published September 29, 2012
12 people want to read
About the author
Ellen Birkett Morris
12 books138 followersEllen Birkett Morris’s novel Beware the Tall Grass is the winner of the Donald L. Jordan Award for Literary Excellence, judged by Lan Samantha Chang, and will be published in 2024 by CSU Press. She is the author of Lost Girls: Short Stories, winner of the Pencraft Award and finalist for the Clara Johnson, IAN and Best Book awards. Her fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, Antioch Review, Notre Dame Review, and South Carolina Review, among other journals. She is a winner of the Bevel Summers Prize for short fiction. Morris is a recipient of an Al Smith Fellowship for her fiction from the Kentucky Arts Council.
Morris is also the author of Abide and Surrender, poetry chapbooks. Her poetry has appeared in The Clackamas Literary Review, Juked, Gastronomica, and Inscape, among other journals, and in eight anthologies. Morris won top prize in the 2008 Binnacle Ultra-Short Edition and was a finalist for the 2019 and 2020 Rita Dove Poetry Prize. Her poem “Abide” was featured on NPR’s A Way with Words. Her essays have appeared in Newsweek, AARP’s The Ethel, Oh Reader magazine, and on National Public Radio.
Morris holds an MFA in creative writing from Queens University-Charlotte.
Morris is also the author of Abide and Surrender, poetry chapbooks. Her poetry has appeared in The Clackamas Literary Review, Juked, Gastronomica, and Inscape, among other journals, and in eight anthologies. Morris won top prize in the 2008 Binnacle Ultra-Short Edition and was a finalist for the 2019 and 2020 Rita Dove Poetry Prize. Her poem “Abide” was featured on NPR’s A Way with Words. Her essays have appeared in Newsweek, AARP’s The Ethel, Oh Reader magazine, and on National Public Radio.
Morris holds an MFA in creative writing from Queens University-Charlotte.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 17, 2015
When, three years ago, I wrote a blurb for the back of this book, I think I failed to understand what was happening in it.
The first half of this book is about growing up, coming to understand sexuality first as a teen and then as a fully adult married woman.
The second half, however, almost exactly from the spine staple, deals with death. Primarily with the sickness and death of a troublesome father, with occasional detours to mark other deaths. From "Fatherless Girls"
to the final "Inheritance"
the poems tell a gritty truth.
What a line on which to end.
The first half of this book is about growing up, coming to understand sexuality first as a teen and then as a fully adult married woman.
The second half, however, almost exactly from the spine staple, deals with death. Primarily with the sickness and death of a troublesome father, with occasional detours to mark other deaths. From "Fatherless Girls"
In the face of absence or worse
Your selfish love looks like a gift
Still you left me and I leave
The porch light on for you
You, out carousing with Death
to the final "Inheritance"
Drunk with abundance, weaving
Arm in arm to the music, we sway
As a shadow staggers in the doorway
Returned not to celebrate or mourn
But to curse the day we were born.
the poems tell a gritty truth.
What a line on which to end.
Displaying 1 of 1 review