JENNIFER LOYD'S DEBUT COLLECTION, GHOST IN THE ARCHIVE, is a beautiful exploration of past and possibility through the life of Rachel Carson and a contemporary speaker who seeks her own truths. The paralleled journeys of the two women toward selfhood and knowing and love push back against worlds that want to define themselves. In dexterous poems that are narrative, lyrical, and as fragmented as our access to history, readers "eat the ashes of the archive," as we hope that in their ingestion we'll find certainty. But Ghost in the Archive reminds us that truth is an act of slow accumulation as "Remember, Body" snakes its way through the collection-only coming into its full view, like a ghostly spine, in the final pages. This researched, introspective, and brave collection will leave you wanting to dip back into the poems, like the oceans Carson loved, again and again.

—Chet'la Sebree

Based in Colorado, Jennifer Loyd is a poet, translator, and a former editor for Copper Nickel, West Branch, and Sycamore Review. For her poetry exploring the archives of Rachel Carson, she has received a Stadler Fellowship, as well as travel grants for research from Purdue University, where she earned an MFA. Her poems and prose, which explore the intersection between private voice and public narratives, appear in Best New Poets 2022, The Southern Review, The Rumpus, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, and elsewhere.

"While Rachel Carson's Silent Spring has saved lives, the fact and example of Rachel Carson may have saved Jennifer Loyd's life. 'An escaped fundamentalist,… / I enrolled in community college, / where I read Silent Spring, and recognized / something it would take years to see: // a woman in her authority, / in rage and loneliness. / A woman in love with women.' At a point of vulnerability, Carson's life helped Jennifer see and move toward her own true nature. Carson was a guide, a friend, a companion, and this book wonderfully explores and celebrates that connection. I don't think I've ever read a group of poems so fundamentally animated by gratitude, the sense of having been given a gift. At one point I wrote that this is a book of love poems, but it's really a book of love, and a marvel of intimacy across time and space." — Bob Hicok, Renowned Poet