Lost and Found

Poetry January 2016 ISBN 978-1-936628-40-7 94 pages Softcover, 6" x 9"

"Andrew Merton has masterfully condensed his life into potent, brilliantly composed, minimalist snapshots. Chronologically arranged, delicately layered, and driven by savage honesty and subtle tenderness, Lost and Found is an intense injection of love, loss, loneliness, and above all, the unrelenting question of one's existence. I'll slot this on my shelf next to Raymond Carver."—Jessica Bell

"Almost every one of his poems has a surprise waiting for the reader, either some astonishing figure of speech or a witty observation we are not likely to forget anytime soon."—Charles Simic

grief love

From the Book

Fifth Grade Air Raid Drill, 1955

I tell Mr. Carter there's a crack in the ant farm, but he has more important things to talk about today:

After the bomb, trees will wither, milk will glow. You might live a year before the insects get you

but first you have to survive the blast. Duck under your desks

and stick your heads between your knees. I pretend to do as I'm told.

When he turns his back I crawl away on six legs, triumphant.

What Others Say

Almost every one of his poems has a surprise waiting for the reader, either some astonishing figure of speech or a witty observation we are not likely to forget anytime soon.

— Charles Simic

Andrew Merton has masterfully condensed his life into potent, brilliantly composed, minimalist snapshots. Chronologically arranged, delicately layered, and driven by savage honesty and subtle tenderness, Lost and Found is an intense injection of love, loss, loneliness, and above all, the unrelenting question of one's existence. I'll slot this on my shelf next to Raymond Carver.

— Jessica Bell

This poet pinpoints the extraordinary in the day to day; he makes the reader see things anew, and even when they appear tawdry and tough, they are rich and sweet. The calm and gentle voice of these poems is nevertheless fierce in its focus on life, aging, disappointment and death, and that makes for the tremendous tension that keeps each poem taut with drama, inviting from the very first line, and powerfully moving until its conclusion.

— John Skoyles

This marvelous book—ruefully charming on one page, charmingly rueful on the next—goes cradle to grave in its coverage of a lifetime's worth of erratic heartbeats. I love Merton's poems for how they completely dissolve the thin line between bafflement and amazement. Their story is the story of a most companionable endurance, with no pun left unspoken. A deeply humane, entertaining, wise book.

— David Rivard

About the Author

Andrew Merton

Andrew Merton is a journalist, essayist, and poet. Publications in which his work has appeared include Esquire, Ms. Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, Boston Magazine, and the Boston Globe. His book Enemies of Choice: The Right-to-Life Movement and Its Threat to Abortion, was published by Beacon Press in 1981. His poetry has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Rialto, Comstock Review, Louisville Review, Vine Leaves, the American Journal of Nursing, and elsewhere. (If he were to found a literary review, he would call it Elsewhere.) Merton's first book of poetry, Evidence that We are Descended from Chairs, with a foreword by Charles Simic (Accents Publishing, 2012), was named Outstanding Book of Poetry for 2013-2014 by the New Hampshire Writers' Project. His books of poetry Lost and Found (2016) and Final Exam (2019) were also published by Accents Publishing. He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of New Hampshire.