Product Description

This is a memoir that is lived in moments. The moments you know - when you see your parents' marriage dissolving, when you realize you're a boy who likes boys, when you speak the truth and don't know if it will be heard. The moments you don't recognize until later - when you leave things unsaid (even to yourself), when you feel your boyfriend letting go, when you give up on love. And the moment you get love back.

In an amazing narrative of poems, Billy Merrell tells an ordinary story in an extraordinary way.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #113844 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up-An affecting memoir told in verse, this work launches a promising young poet. It is more than the recollection of faltering family life; it also deals with Merrell's acceptance of his homosexuality. It is about sons and brothers, friends and lovers. The individual poems enhance one another yet stand alone. The language is measured, doled out carefully, artfully. He writes about his mother: "She's known, she'll say, since I was five/and I'll want to ask why/she didn't tell me sooner, but instead ask/if she's okay." Memories of when he and his father almost speak of his closet homosexuality, and when the moment passes are related in poignant phrases. The poems reveal the author's journey through childhood through the worrisome pit of teen sexuality, made all the more harrowing when a lover dies of AIDS. He silently carries around his fear for ages. He writes, "Admitting/the danger is a danger in itself." This memoir is as difficult as it is beautiful. Merrell writes, "Years later I'll wonder how I didn't know I was lonely when everyone around me did." His sophisticated verse and compelling story will capture attention as it stirs compassion.
Alison Follos, North Country School, Lake Placid, NY
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Gr. 9-12. Merrell has packed a lot of memories into his 22 years: his parents' divorce and remarriages ("I was seven, and remember you loving each other, then not"); realization of his homosexuality ("You sort of know. In that vague way you know you want to write or paint"); and his own failed and new relationships. He has also packed away a lot of wisdom about life, death, self-acceptance, and the vagaries of love and lust. Likewise, he has honed his writing craft, and his free-verse memoir is rich with metaphor, words carefully chosen to say enough but not too much. In one beautiful poem, for example, he alludes to death as that first terrifying jump off the diving board: "Is that what Heaven is like--four seconds and a splash?" Talking in the Dark captures 22 lonely yet hopeful years in a life readers will hope will be a long and productive one. Frances Bradburn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

The first gay book I've related to. Life-changing.
I'm a lesbian. I'm 20, not really a teen. But a friend told me about Billy Merrell's TALKING IN THE DARK because she knew I loved poetry, and it has since become one of my favorite contemporary collections. And not only that, but I found in Merrell a place to feel comfortable. Not only because I'm gay and so is he, but because he happens to be gay, and so do I. He is so wise for his age. My mother is reading it now, and that is what she told me.

The poems are smart, emotional, revealing. Merrell strips his life down to amazing, telling lines that left me wanting it to go on and on. I've read it twice already and am taking my time reading it a third time now, and there's always something new and beautiful to find in the rereading. My favorite poetry is personal, careful, and spiritual (not religious, necessarily, but intensely in touch with the world). That's what the poems in TALKING IN THE DARK are like.

If you know someone, anyone, who reads poetry, this is a book that will affect them, always.

amazing
i read "talking in the dark" over a year ago and it has still stuck with me. even though this memoir is told through poetry, it is very easy to read and understand. you can really relate to what merrell has gone through. this book is definately an amazing undiscovered gem. i highly recommend it.

why isn't it in more stores!? my favorite book!
~*AMAZING*~ My girlfriend loved TALKING IN THE DARK and MADE me read it, which I don't usually do. She said I would like it because I like poetry, which is sort of true lately. But it took me months to find it in a store before my mom bought it online for me... since I don't have a credit cared, duh. But it's great. I haven't read anything like it before. And my girlfriend likes me to read her parts, especially SHHH and HISTORYS. Guys, buy this book for your girlfriends (or boyfriends).