by Betsy Sholl, Poet Laureate of Maine

In A HOUSE OF BOTTLES, Robin Merrill writes with verve and wit. Whether she is taking us on a hospital ship to Africa or just next door, the journey is always into the depths of the human heart. Her faith is big enough to be both funny and frank, to grieve the world's terrible wounds and celebrate our enduring grit. These poems call us to compassion. Like prophecies written in lipstick across a mirror, we can't help but see, and can't possibly refuse Merrill's compelling vision.

by Gray Jacobik, author of BRAVE DISGUISES and THE DOUBLE TASK

Funny, harrowing, sad, animate: the poems gathered in Robin Merrill's A HOUSE OF BOTTLES are artful although unadorned, edgy and troubling (the way American life is edgy and troubling). and they are unshakeable--as if a rose with a canker had unfolded and spent its blooms before you. Merrill's vision isn't beautiful: it's just overwhelmingly real. These are "dare you" poems: they dare you to be vulnerable and to see. If you take the dare, you may not be glad, but you will be enriched.