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Merciful Days
In language both plainspoken and lyrical, East Tennessee poet Jesse Graves examines the connections that hold people together across generations and against the breaches of time and distance. The landscapes of his native region possess a mythic beauty and Graves writes of the animating force it can become in a poet's imagination. Graves's poems are haunted by the lost futures of lives cut short and by speculative narrations of omens and portents. For all the darkness visible in the world, Graves elevates the great joy of feeding birds, walking in the woods, and sharing a life, sometimes only in memory, with the people we love. Those who have passed on are remembered here and their stories become a source of light. The new work in MERCIFUL DAYS will remind readers why Ron Rash has said, These poems have the music, wisdom, and singular voice of a talent fully realized, and make abundantly clear that Jesse Graves is one of America's finest young poets.
- GenresPoetry
57 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 14, 2021
I believe this is Graves finest poetry collection to date, which is significant considering I think he is the premier poet of the American South today. These poems penetrate the idiom of personal and family history in such a way that it transcends the qualities typically seen in nature poetry. Instead, these territories inform a changing inner landscape that deals with loss, memory, mortality, and fate in an unflinching yet generous voice. I recommend this collection in the highest possible terms.
December 1, 2020
In his third solo poetry collection, Merciful Days, Jesse Graves returns to the East Tennessee farm of his youth. The land Graves writes about is also his ancestral home. Sense of place is almost a requirement for Tennessee writers, but Graves’ abiding connection to place gives exquisite life and meaning to his work. Many poems center around the loss of the author’s father and brother. Those poems are poignant in their own right, but they speak to a larger theme that flows throughout the collection: that we as individuals are only a fleeting part of something much larger and more mysterious than we can fully comprehend. This idea is evident in “Mossy Springs” where the narrator revisits a watering hole on the family farm:
…you wonder at the bloodlines
that drank here before you,
dating as far back as time records.
Hunters from the original tribes,
trackers chasing game upstream,
farmers drawn over from the fields,
and now you, looking for the lost
kingdom of your ancestors,
their eternal thirst to be found.
For Graves, this big examination of generations extending “as far back as time records” is inseparable from his own personal experience. His life is tied to the past in ways that are not completely understood even though they are tangibly felt. “Come Running” depicts this, and it is perhaps my favorite poem in this collection:
Come Running
They amble across the field, drawn to shade,
sniffing for uncropped clover and sprout,
their slowness measurable by galactic tilt.
From a distance the calves look identical,
but watch closely, and the shadings around
white faces range from salmon to maroon,
and the little curls on their foreheads
twist in tighter and looser tangles.
If a baby separates from its mother,
she calls for it like a foghorn, the lowing
anyone can tell means “find me now.”
But listen closer, and a mother can signal
her child with the slightest grunt
from the other side of the field—
no other calf will move or even look up,
yet one comes running, summoned home.
In many ways, Merciful Days is simply about the idea of memory—how memory keeps the past connected to the present and the future, and how memory sustains us through loss and sadness. Merciful Days is an elegy, but it’s not a dirge. These poems are full of joyous moments, as well as of the deepest sense of love, the kind that only expands and grows.
…you wonder at the bloodlines
that drank here before you,
dating as far back as time records.
Hunters from the original tribes,
trackers chasing game upstream,
farmers drawn over from the fields,
and now you, looking for the lost
kingdom of your ancestors,
their eternal thirst to be found.
For Graves, this big examination of generations extending “as far back as time records” is inseparable from his own personal experience. His life is tied to the past in ways that are not completely understood even though they are tangibly felt. “Come Running” depicts this, and it is perhaps my favorite poem in this collection:
Come Running
They amble across the field, drawn to shade,
sniffing for uncropped clover and sprout,
their slowness measurable by galactic tilt.
From a distance the calves look identical,
but watch closely, and the shadings around
white faces range from salmon to maroon,
and the little curls on their foreheads
twist in tighter and looser tangles.
If a baby separates from its mother,
she calls for it like a foghorn, the lowing
anyone can tell means “find me now.”
But listen closer, and a mother can signal
her child with the slightest grunt
from the other side of the field—
no other calf will move or even look up,
yet one comes running, summoned home.
In many ways, Merciful Days is simply about the idea of memory—how memory keeps the past connected to the present and the future, and how memory sustains us through loss and sadness. Merciful Days is an elegy, but it’s not a dirge. These poems are full of joyous moments, as well as of the deepest sense of love, the kind that only expands and grows.
February 12, 2021
Beautiful. Just beautiful. And stunning. Reading Graves's MERCIFUL DAYS has hollowed me out and then filled the space with memories that at once are not mine and yet somehow enrich mine.
June 12, 2025
Channeling past and prophesying future, this collection evokes every feeling about the passage of the time one can think of. A beautiful collection.
May 22, 2021
As someone who has lost a father, and someone currently sifting through heritage and genealogy, and looking for what that means for us as we move into a future without these people, I connected strongly to the poems. Beautiful collection.
April 11, 2026
I recently had the opportunity to meet Jesse Graves, and hearing him speak about his backstory and the "grit" of his process made an already profound collection even more meaningful. As a writer, I found his work to be a masterclass in diction specifically in how he balances broad generalizations with hyper-specific details to anchor a scene.
Graves has a fascinating way of choosing what to name and what to leave archetypal. In "Distant Star," he mentions an "old red truck" alongside a "David Brown tractor." This juxtaposition suggests that while some objects are just scenery, others like the specific brand of a family tractor carry the weight of historical permanence.
This theme continues in my favorite poem of the collection, "Old Man Wandering in the Roads." Graves gives the reader exactly what they need to see the scene: a grandfather eating "sardines and saltines" or the "old Ford" he used while grafting trees across four counties. There is a distinct Southern tenacity in these lines. The grandfather is "wacky" and eccentric, yet he possesses the absolute strength to stick to his own internal rhythm.
While the atmosphere of Merciful Days is often somber, Grave's narrative voice provides a persistent thread of hope. In the final stanza of "The Kingdom of the Dead," he writes:
"I fear what will I see, yet still long to see."
That concluding phrase transforms the fear of loss into a hopeful, necessary curiosity. I've come to see the subtext of this book as an invitation to "give mercy to the dead." By choosing to look back despite the pain, Graves frames these "merciful days" not as a haunting, but as a positive reclamation of the people and places he has lost.
Meeting Graves and hearing about the long road to completing this manuscript gave me a newfound respect for the endurance required in the writing life. Whether he's discussing the signature of a graveyard or the practicalities of a writing support group, his perspective is as grounding as his poetry. This collection is a beautiful, gritty, and ultimately hopeful witness to Appalachian life and the persistence of memory. 5/5 stars
Graves has a fascinating way of choosing what to name and what to leave archetypal. In "Distant Star," he mentions an "old red truck" alongside a "David Brown tractor." This juxtaposition suggests that while some objects are just scenery, others like the specific brand of a family tractor carry the weight of historical permanence.
This theme continues in my favorite poem of the collection, "Old Man Wandering in the Roads." Graves gives the reader exactly what they need to see the scene: a grandfather eating "sardines and saltines" or the "old Ford" he used while grafting trees across four counties. There is a distinct Southern tenacity in these lines. The grandfather is "wacky" and eccentric, yet he possesses the absolute strength to stick to his own internal rhythm.
While the atmosphere of Merciful Days is often somber, Grave's narrative voice provides a persistent thread of hope. In the final stanza of "The Kingdom of the Dead," he writes:
"I fear what will I see, yet still long to see."
That concluding phrase transforms the fear of loss into a hopeful, necessary curiosity. I've come to see the subtext of this book as an invitation to "give mercy to the dead." By choosing to look back despite the pain, Graves frames these "merciful days" not as a haunting, but as a positive reclamation of the people and places he has lost.
Meeting Graves and hearing about the long road to completing this manuscript gave me a newfound respect for the endurance required in the writing life. Whether he's discussing the signature of a graveyard or the practicalities of a writing support group, his perspective is as grounding as his poetry. This collection is a beautiful, gritty, and ultimately hopeful witness to Appalachian life and the persistence of memory. 5/5 stars
June 8, 2021
Probably my favorite poetry book at this point. Definitely recommend.
June 30, 2022
This volume of Jesse Graves' poetry reads like a memoir and an elegy to his family and past: Memories from childhood, reflections on how his life was touched by the natural and pastoral worlds around him, and by the people in his life who have since passed on. I think my favorite poem from the collection is "Lisa in the Forest": "Every flash of new color announces itself to her eye, greener green, dirtier brown, full spectrum fanning out like a wild library, each sprig a volume in the catalogue of life." I also loved "October Woods": "The first cold nights have curled the edges of forest floor ginger, rouged the sumac and sugar maples... Turkey-tail fungus fans across the torsos of downed trees, morning frost scintillating it all." Graves is able to simply and elegantly describe natural scenes in a way that awakens all of your senses. I love poetry that makes itself felt.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews