Necromantic

Necromantic explores how urban legends are formed, how the retelling of tragic events creates a landscape of regret in small towns, and how humor and radical acceptance help us move past it. With an unflinching eye, McCarren chronicles generations of traumatic deaths, disasters, and wars, weighs the social impact of their mythic rotations, and creates a narrative of global scope and mortal gravitas. A memento mori in poetic form, Necromantic reminds us to pay our respects to the dead, trust in the wisdom provided by their untimely demise, and learn from our most fragile moments as humankind.

Rachel McCarren's marvelous work, Necromantic, says the unsayable; it challenges our thinking about life and death and everything in between. Filled with startling insight and humour, her work proves to us that what should be grim reading isn't always so. Rachel tries on different personas, discards them, moves on. With a wonderful storyteller's art and a drilling eye for detail, she entertains and shocks us, and pushes us up against our own frailties. A powerful must-read.
- Jean O'Brien, Poet

Rachel McCarren's Necromantic pierces the thin membrane between life and death, reclaims the stories of her life and the 'stubborn ghosts' that haunt this poet's imagination. Here, dark narratives are vividly exhumed. A chilling, striking collection, these poems hit you with a force from the moment you encounter them and you simply cannot put them down.
- Edna Wyley, Poet

LOVED THIS BOOK. Utterly true to its title, Necromantic is a daring and arresting conversation with the many kinds of deaths that we encounter, the physical, spiritual, and mental ways in which we perish or endure, both literally and figuratively. Filled with deft imagery and haunting language, these poems disturb and disrupt, yet ironically, they also soothe in their embrace of mortality, making us pause and appreciate the fleeting nature of life all the more.
- Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet