Here in the Anthropocene Age as we human animals are faced with the possibility of ecological collapse, The Ghost of Persephone asks us to pay attention to the pleas of other animals. And to listen to one who understands what is at stake: Persephone, the mythic voice of Spring. The poems and art of The Ghost of Persephone are an imagined response to what Persephone might be counseling from her unique position between the realms of decay and regeneration. This collection makes much of shifting between . . . between the current reality of ecological distress and the hopeful possibility that the followers of the Eleusinian Mysteries called “apocalypse,” with its ancient sense of “portal into transformation.”

Journey with Mary Catherine Harper through that portal.

“In The Ghost of Persephone, poet Mary Catherine Harper turns her sharp, unflinching gaze on Persephone, exploring the myths that surround her with fresh introspection. Conjuring the natural tension between loss and abundance, these sometimes anxious but always beautiful poems move between haiku and prose poems and beyond, capturing the relevance of Persephone’s story in our own uncertain world. It’s as though the varied forms represent the fragility of our diverse natural world and the urgency so richly rendered by Harper; this collection asks its readers to reckon with difficult truths.”
-Colleen Alles, author of Close to a Flame

“Mary Catherine Harper’s The Ghost of Persephone is both elegy and eulogy—praise and mourning—for our world in its Anthropocene epoch. Setting the book’s tone in “Lithologies,” Harper writes, “Let me remember, also, that our bodies are fragile sap. / Let me hope, even as I cry out in dreadful certitude.” With Persephone as our guide under and above ground, and through karst cracks and caverns, Harper invites us to enter through “a stone portal opening” to experience geologic time, “humans being stone,” and “rocks being human.” Harper’s deep and abiding love for all this world’s critters—tardigrades and tarantulas, copperheads and cranes, humans and mice—leaves no room for judgment, not for the mouse mother who births her babies in an engine cavity on a long drive, or for the car mechanic who discards them all during a routine oil change. As Persephone can be trusted to wake the world into spring, so too can Harper can be trusted to travel with us into apocalypse, with this collection an excellent companion.”
-Dawn Burns, author of A Green Glow on the Horizon

“Troubled times in a troubled world can obscure our sense of direction. Where to find hope? Mary Catherine Harper's beautifully rendered poems take us to precisely the right place, deeply engaged with Persephone. The god of death, paradoxically seeking to sustain life, sends Persephone "to whisper how to tend forests to anyone the least bit receptive to the ghost of her among them." The poems take us with her into the intricate, elemental, profound, and powerful life beneath, above and within.”
-Margaret Rozga, 2019-2020 Wisconsin Poet Laureate author of Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems