Talking in the Dark

I read this book the first time a few years ago, and not I think I have read it about 5 times total. It is the one book I could keep reading and never get sick of! Awesome story with poems that make you giggle and poems that made you sad. Highly recommended!!!

The thing that a lot of people sometimes forget about poetry is that when it's good, the poems become a part of your soul. Poems lift you up when you need lifting and bring you down when you need grounding. And this book is like that. Billy Merrell is a true poet and has the soul of a wise, wise man. And yet he's only 21! Amazing. The poems here may be about homosexuality and family struggle, may contain drug use and have moments of sexual description, but Merrell knows that the poems aren't REALLY about these things. Instead, they are about transcending one's own childhood and one's own adolescence in order to find sanctuary in the spirits of our ancestors. I can't recommend this book enough. Like 5 of my friends have borrowed my copy and have insisted they have their own. It's the kind of book you want to have propped up near your bed so you can read it just before you go to sleep.

~*AMAZING*~ My girlfriend loved TALKING IN THE DARK and MADE me read it, which I don't usually do. She said I would like it because I like poetry, which is sort of true lately. But it took me months to find it in a store before my mom bought it online for me... since I don't have a credit cared, duh. But it's great. I haven't read anything like it before. And my girlfriend likes me to read her parts, especially SHHH and HISTORYS. Guys, buy this book for your girlfriends (or boyfriends).

i read "talking in the dark" over a year ago and it has still stuck with me. even though this memoir is told through poetry, it is very easy to read and understand. you can really relate to what merrell has gone through. this book is definately an amazing undiscovered gem. i highly recommend it.

I'm a lesbian. I'm 20, not really a teen. But a friend told me about Billy Merrell's TALKING IN THE DARK because she knew I loved poetry, and it has since become one of my favorite contemporary collections. And not only that, but I found in Merrell a place to feel comfortable. Not only because I'm gay and so is he, but because he happens to be gay, and so do I. He is so wise for his age. My mother is reading it now, and that is what she told me.The poems are smart, emotional, revealing. Merrell strips his life down to amazing, telling lines that left me wanting it to go on and on. I've read it twice already and am taking my time reading it a third time now, and there's always something new and beautiful to find in the rereading. My favorite poetry is personal, careful, and spiritual (not religious, necessarily, but intensely in touch with the world). That's what the poems in TALKING IN THE DARK are like.If you know someone, anyone, who reads poetry, this is a book that will affect them, always.