Abby E. Murray’s debut Hail and Farewell is a bold examination of the intimate relationship between a soldier and a pacifist, bound together by choice. The collection reveals a wife’s perspective during her husband’s deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, including the whiplash of infertility experienced between tours. Inseparable by heart, their marriage is also built on disagreement. Military spouses are often expected to express absolute patriotism, and to conform to gender roles shaped by sexist, archaic ideals. But these poems don’t aim to accuse; rather, they call for compassion and community in the face of isolation. Capable of inserting levity into the most dire of circumstances, the poet never lets the reader forget what is at stake. Murray tears the idealized from the real, illuminating the brutality of battle and loss—traumas we tend to avoid in both military and civilian life. Hail and Farewell is an expertly woven treatise on love, war, and politics.
When our daughter falls
down the carpeted hotel stairs,
her body translates to others
you’ve seen before,
fingers outstretched in search of anchor,
elbows locked into columns.
You didn’t catch those bodies
either, not even a sleeve.
She howls. You scream for me
the way a medic screamed for you,
yelling as if I don’t kneel
on the same carpet you cradle her on,
its red lotus design bursting
like fire at night.
We lean into each other like ruins
beneath a glittering chandelier,
our backs to the guests
who line up to check out.
Listen to “Five Days after the Wedding,” read by Abby E. Murray:
Listen to “Hail and Farewell as a Junkyard Dog,” read by Abby E. Murray:
Finalist for the 2020 Washington State Book Award in Poetry from the Washington Center for the Book
Finalist for the 2020 Housatonic Book Award in Poetry
Finalist for the 2020 First Horizon Book Award, the 2020 Montaigne Medal, and received Honorable Mention for the 2020 Eric Hoffer Grand Prize in Poetry