Memories of Green
“Erin Ganaway gives us a world seen through the dual lens of grief and praise. She sees this world clearly, and she renders it in textured language that compels us to feel the words as we understand them. This is the work of the poet. In this moving collection, Ganaway has done that work well.”
--Judson Mitcham
“Erin Ganaway's poems are as emotionally deep as they are clear-cut and precise at the surface. The elegiac poems of Memories of Green offer their readers an almanac of loss, an atlas of grief, and yet, in their close attention to the natural world (both inner and outer), a calendar of celebration. They condense the complex collateral damage surrounding a suicide, the memories and regrets and moments of providentially heightened awareness, into a poetry of pure presence. “
--R. H. W. Dillard
“Erin Ganaway's Memories of Green reflects a complex mind, both elegiac and celebratory, dark and illuminating. Ganaway is unafraid of subtle ornament: her words--particularly her verbs--compel the reader's imagination into new territories, just as she illumines the depths of her own seasonal experience in a deeply imaginal and imaginative way. In Ganaway's world, experience does not equal mere transcription, but the challenge of finding connective tissues that both freight and lighten human experience. Metaphors are always surprising, and aural imagery blooms beyond the page, as do other imageries, creating half-lives that allow her poems to reside in the mind long after they are read… a beautiful addition to Ganaway's growing body of poetry, a poetry I consider important to American letters.”
--William Wright
The Waiting Girl
The Waiting Girl explores the exterior and interior landscapes as they apply to identity, specifically celebrating the Appalachian South and Cape Cod. The poems in this collection carry readers from the cracked red earth of Georgia to the cobblestone streets of Nantucket. Through these bold environments, Ganaway delves into the nuances of mania and melancholia, illuminating the bittersweet nature of bipolar disorder, and raising awareness of this still largely misunderstood state of being.
Words of Praise for The Waiting Girl
"Just as Melville's Ishmael did when he was 'growing grim about the mouth,' with his 'hypos' getting out of hand, Erin Ganaway sets sail on an ocean of longing and melancholia and, in the poems of The Waiting Girl, with equally startling and inspiring results. In poems that are remarkable in their honesty, their clarity, and the depth of their feeling, she voyages through lost past, painful present, and fearsome future with the sure knowledge that 'It is never too late / to regain the place / that means everything.' What more could we ask?"
—R. H. W. Dillard
"Erin Ganaway's The Waiting Girl is one of the freshest poetry collections I have read in a long time. Brimming with dynamic turns of phrase, rich imagery, and sophisticated honesty, Ganaway's debut collection explores dichotomies of the visible landscapes she inhabits—Appalachian Georgia and Cape Cod, Massachusetts—and the bipolarities of inner, psychological landscapes. A significant new voice in contemporary poetry, Ganaway stuns with both delicacy and subtle violence, poems of raw energy and meticulous craftsmanship. The Waiting Girl reveals a poet of genuine giftedness, one who will endure."
—William Wright