"It is not often that one encounters mastery in a debut book of poems but that is exactly what happens in Chelsea Wagenaar's Mercy Spurs The Bone where the poems are crafted into light-filled islands of lyric selfhood small Edens of conceptual originality and rigorously precise language. Writing in an elliptical style Wagenaar achieves that articulation of being that mysterious symbiosis of self and world which is at the very heart of poetry. A double gift then: this brilliant beginning and more than sufficient promise of the wonders that are sure to follow."--B.H. Fairchild

Chelsea Wagenaar received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and is currently a doctoral fellow at the University of North Texas. She lives in Denton Texas with her husband, fellow poet Mark Wagenaar.