Seren of the Wildwood, by Marly Youmans
Seren is born on the brink of Wildwood, realm of shadowy fey who listen and laugh–who sometimes bless and sometimes curse. As she grows into young womanhood, shaped by a familial tragedy tied to her conception, she is lured from home by a whispering mystery in Wildwood, where the supernatural roams freely through time and space. In riddling, often dangerous forests and mountains marked by fallen powers and holy women, oracles, hermits, and giants, Seren finds both violence and balm on a path arrowing toward transformation.
“A little girl dancing between the graves of her brothers, a body held suspended and starlit in a thorn tree.... Marly Youmans is a spinner of archetypal images that seem at once strange and strangely familiar. The poem's form, hybridizing the 'bob and wheel' of medieval poetry with the iambic pentameter narratives of the Romantic and Victorian era, conjures a time-frame outside time, perfectly suited to the story. This book is itself a 'Wildwood' where fey, elusive, illusory phenomena draw the protagonist—and the reader—deeper and deeper into mystery.”
—Amit Majmudar, author of What He Did in Solitary
“Seren, Seren, Seren.” This poem whispers to our fractured souls, and with it Marly Youmans invites us into an adventure that is at once psychologically potent and fantastical. Youmans can paint luminous vistas with her prismatic words. Such holy incantation, now rare in American arts, gives grace to our mystery-filled “Wildwood” journeys. Youmans is a gem, and Seren is an immense gift for the sanctification of our imaginations.”
—Makoto Fujimura, artist, author of Art+Faith: A Theology of Making (Yale University Press)
“Into the darkness, mystery, and fate”: that’s where Seren of the Wildwood will take you; also into the light. The old verities are not an embarrassment to Marly Youmans, our “mistress of the marvelous.” For all that has changed in the world over the ages—and all that continues to change, even as we speak, as competing savants tell us this or that is what we must expect—we still gather around “A hearth and wildwood blaze / On nights in winter crowned / By the strange, striking lays / That hold mortals spellbound.”
—John Wilson, contributing editor for The Englewood Review of Books and senior editor at The Marginalia Review of Books
Publication Date: March 6, 2023
Retail Price: $16.00 (Hardcover) $13.00 (Paperback)
