Ghost Man on Second

by Erica Reid

Erica Reid’s debut collection, Ghost Man on Second, traces a daughter’s search for her place in the world after estrangement from her parents. Reid writes, “It’s hard to feel at home unless I’m aching.” Growing from this sense of isolation, Reid’s stories create new homes in nature, in mythology, and in poetic forms—including sestinas, sonnets, and golden shovels—containers that create and hold new realizations and vantage points. Reid stands up to members of her family, asking for healing amid dissolving bonds. These poems move through emotional registers, embodying nostalgia, hurt, and hope. Throughout Ghost Man on Second, the poems portray Reid’s active grappling with home and confrontation with the ghosts she finds there.

—Praise for Ghost Man on Second—

Ghost Man on Second gives us grief and endurance, loss and joy, transmuted by the play of verse and imagination into poetry. Its thematic concerns deal with an absent father, suggested by the book’s title, the troubles and determination of a young mother alone, and how these conditions have affected their child. Dilemmas, hurts, yearnings, and elusive retrievals are magically changed by the poet’s sophisticated technical skill into living poems, works of art that invite reading and rereading. New forms, like the duplex, and old, like the sonnet sequence, offer us strong feeling and fresh wisdom and the remembered sense that these have always been what we expect from well-wrought poems. As the poet implies in one of her best, what is behind and above the artificial ceiling are forgotten depths of space and light. And the aim of our imaginary self wandering the world is eventually to make it home.
—Mark Jarman, author of Zeno’s Eternity

The speaker of the poems that compose Erica Reid’s Ghost Man on Second is well-acquainted with chaos and its antidote—“the diamond- / shaped cycle” of form, the capacity to tell the tale, to name, and poetry’s cradling music. The array of forms—from the Golden Shovel to the ghazal, the cat’s cradle sonnet to the sonnet crown that is situated in the belly of the book—is illuminative. One feels form’s necessity, the pressure of truth upon it. Each formal experiment provides a nest for the ghost, the angel, and the neglected child that haunt this book. Now and then, a rough upbringing and its consequent emptiness can incite a rare capacity for seeing and chronicling what is. “The trees’ white pulp is so thick on the trail / that my eyes first choose to believe / a rabbit’s warren has been ripped apart, / all that sacred belly fur scattered,” Reid writes, forever transforming the way I will see a cottonwood, a rabbit warren, and a poem. This is a book to re-read, and cherish.
—Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

Published March 29, 2024

About the author

Erica Reid’s debut collection, Ghost Man on Second, won the 2023 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was published by Autumn House Press in early 2024. Erica’s poems appear in Rattle, Birmingham Poetry Review, Colorado Review, and more.

Reviews

[Nicholas Trandahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

With her debut collection “Ghost Man on Second” poet Erica Reid has struck the first brilliant sparks to what is assured to be a luminous and lasting place in American poetry. In these poems, Reid has shown a profound mastery of form and subject, delving into complex narrative in such an artful and sometimes playful manner, that we are eased into what is sometimes darkened themes and stories, as often as she illuminates these pages with sunlight and birdsong. When I finished her long poem sequence “Emily”, for example, I knew I was in the presence of a master. I am on pins and needles as I wait for what Erica Reid shows us next.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a powerful collection, in both form and content. I especially appreciate the crown of sonnets in one of the sections—the repetition is so effective.

[CMarie Fuhrman · Rating 5 out of 5]

If this is Erica Reid's first book, can you imagine what else this poet is going to offer the world?

Ghost Man on Second is one of the most inspiring, energetic, and imaginative poetry collections I have read. It's a book that makes you want to write poems. It is a primer for writing in form, including free verse. This is a book that will be taught in classrooms, left unshelved, referenced, and quoted.

Check this out:
From "Nocturn after Kelly Webber"

If I move, I'll break a smile across this floor. Hunger
is different from emptiness. I'd need to know what I want
to be hungry. There are things I can only want at night. And
here comes a new day's light, crooked at each knuckle.

From the sonnet crown, "Emily" to Golden Shovels and Found Poems, this collection is a source of poetic energy, a week of Friday nights, a belly laugh and a gut drop. It is right that this book won the 2023 Donald Justice Prize for Poetry, and it is even more right that it will find its way to the top of everyone's favorite poetry collections.

[Gabriel Noel · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC given by Edelweiss+ for Honest Review

Haunting and hopeful. A testament to strength and form. Reid plays with poem structure, form, and meter and in playful way. I wasn't a fan of the 3-5-3 haiku format but the end result still felt concrete.

My favorite poems are: "Father as Ghost or Sheep or Nothing", "The Earth Has Hiked Her Skirt", "When I Say I'm Not A Morning Person", and "Deciduous."

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. A beautifully moving collection of poems, masterfully written. What an absolute delight!

[Sienna · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars

My favorite poems:

Disorder
Five Story House
Sestina Obbligato
Wake Up Call
Emily
Part of Me Hurtling Toward
If Ever There Were a Time for a Short Title

[Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely beautiful and profound book. I was pulled in by the fluid writing. Brought me to tears many times!

[Mary Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Favorite poems: Disorder, Each Night | Send My Courage Out, Sestina Obbligato, Why Is My Angel So Small?, Nocturne after Kelly Weber, Shucking, Emily, The Artificial Ceiling, The Getaway Car

[Sherri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vulnerable, tight yet expansive, shimmering. One of my favorites is O For a Muse on Fire. This is poetry that begs to be read aloud.

[David J · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the first poem to the last and everything in between, Ghost Man on Second is a joy to read. I am a student of poetry, and this wonderful collection of poems has become a study guide for me. Erica Reid's word choice, sentence structure, and all the different forms she used have brought tears to my eyes, made me laugh, and inspired me to write new poems and work on poems I thought I had finished.
Ghost Man on Second is a collection to leave on the nightstand and pick up often to read for the first time and reread.
Our community in McCall, Idaho, was fortunate to have Erica Reid teach a poetry class and share her poetry with us. Her class and reading of Emily from this collection left a memorable impact on our community and fostered a deeper appreciation for the art of poetry.

[Amelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an intensely, painfully relatable collection. Anyone grappling with estranged parents or a bumpy recovery from a difficult childhood should read Erica's work. I already can't wait to see what she writes next.

The poems I dog-eared:

Disorder
Five-Story House
Why Is My Angel So Small?
Nocturne after Kelly Weber
Shucking
Emily (this one's my favorite!)
Deciduous
Owl
The Getaway Car

[Mya Matteo · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This is what finally frightens you? No–chaos & I go way back.”

[Angela Hursh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't normally like written poetry (I prefer spoken word poetry), but this book was incredibly moving and deeply emotional. I really felt the conflict and emotional journey that Reid goes through as she deals with past trauma and future hopes. It felt real and personal, and not at all pretentious. If you have a complicated relationship with your parents, your body, and the world, this book will definitely make you feel less alone and help you put your emotions into words.

[Rhiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you Autumn House Press for the Arc!
I thoroughly enjoyed this! Complicated relationships with parents, grief, and feminist lyricism. Truly stunning.

[kiara (kia) ausler · Rating 3 out of 5]

i did not love this. however, the parts i didn’t love were moreso low impact than they were “bad.” so i’d like to focus on the part i LOVED: second. this second section of the collection is interwoven in a way that becomes a short story of poems. the visuals are vivid and evocative while maintaining the mundanity of familial relationships. i wish each section had been executed as well because that section was truly something beautiful and painful

[Carol D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Readers, it is not often we read a book of poetry cover to cover without stopping, and then read it again, but this collection is an exception. For a variety of reasons, it is compulsively readable. The ideas are direct and moving, involving the writer's uneasy childhood, the child within her, and her wise self in dialogue with the past. Okay, maybe you know those themes well, maybe exploring your own growing up and growing old feels like enough to manage, but the value of course is always about how those themes are explored, and these poems are consistently direct, revealing, and tough, while at the same time graceful, gracious, and tender. I could go on about the charms of the poems' traditional forms, but let me instead emphasize that they contribute to the ease of reading. In surprising word plays, twists and turns, Reid mines and develops traditional forms such as sestina and sonnet, well, masterfully. The way the poems' forms and meanings are seamlessly intertwined can be left unnoticed if you choose, or probed and celebrated. I went for the latter. What a fine book. A first book, no less; I will be following Reid's work and asking for more.

[Erin Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

You could read this book as a how-to guide for writing forms: sestina, golden shovel, sonnet crown, ghazal, among others. But don’t be fooled. These are not poems trying on different outfits; the poems drive the forms, not the other way around. I love the tonal range: one minute you’re punched in the gut and the next, you’re smiling. Take this excerpt from “Five-Story House”: “I never had a bedroom at my father’s house. For a time, before he remarried, he laid a mattress on the floor & it was mine. When he built his own house, it had a room for my brother, another for my sister, another for my stepmom’s treadmill.” The treadmill!! Diane Seuss is right: “Now and then, a rough upbringing and its consequent emptiness can incite a rare capacity for seeing and chronicling what is.” Ghost on Second is that rare book, Erica Reid that rare poet.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about family, mythology, ghosts, grief, and joy.

from Disorder: "A recent season of dreams has made it clear / that I prefer a hellscape where I understand the rules / to a paradise where I do not. // How can it be paradise / if even here I cannot make my mother smile?"

from Nocturne after Kelly Weber: "My worth is asleep under a blanket strewn with teeth. / If I move, I'll break a smile across this floor. Hunger / is different from emptiness. I'd need to know what I want / to be hungry. There are things I can only want at night."

from Shucking: "I will not be a mother. Certain friends tell me to stall, / too soon to decide. They cannot see that I have a fist / for a womb. I know I am missing a safe, warm place / inside."

[Gail DiVico · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I just finished reading for our library's February reading challenge program. I chose it because it looked like something different, and the topic of unhappiness and parental issues during the author's growing up years and how it affected her really registered with me. There are four sections, each section containing poems. The ghos man on second symbolizes the author's father who was never around.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

form poetry is never my fav but these poems were fantastic. It takes so much detail and care to make form poetry (sestinas, sonnets, and more) feel not cliche, and this book accomplished that and so much more. I really appreciated this text, especially because I feel like Reid writes in a poetry style that I typically don't really read---and it's always wonderful to expose myself to different types of poetry.

[Sunni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous and heartbreaking. Reid is a master of the sonnet, and the crown of sonnets in the center of the book reads, in parts, casually, all the while weaving a gutting narrative. And the poems about Colorado sang. I’ll revisit this collection several more times, I know.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a good reason that this book won the 2023 Donald Justice Poetry Prize, because it was written from the heart by a wonderful poet. You won't be disappointed!