Reviews and Press for Girl at the End of the World

The world burns down and rises up from the ashes again and again, whether from wildfires, a father’s death, “clocks turning black, / or the dry riverbeds.” And still a girl remains, calling out into the cold cosmos. She is a survivor. Against the advice of grown-ups, she opens a door in the woods and walks through it, entering a place of memory, fantasy, and dream: the realm of poetry. The poems of Erin Carlyle’s Girl at the End of the World aren’t afraid of the dark. They reclaim the magic and power of a time when the wolves in fairy tales lived in the girl’s home and around the corner. Carlyle’s sharp lines cut, and her stark vignettes will blow you back. Here is the voice of a daughter of so many of our American crises: violence, poverty, climate, opioids. Here is a poet willing to travel to the edge—to outer space, to the room behind the mirror, or to her own darkest memories—and then return to tell the tale.

—Becca Klaver, Author of Ready for the World