Hail and Farewell

“‘… only girls / had the grit to transform themselves,’ Abby E. Murray writes in Hail and Farewell, her fine first collection of poems. Murray has grit to spare, examining in intimate, often devastating detail what it means to be a pacifist married to a soldier. Both insider and outsider, the speaker in these poems interrogates military culture, war, and violence with insight and compassion ... For those of us who have the luxury of not thinking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Hail and Farewell is necessary reading, reminding us what sacrifice looks like.” —Ellen Bass

“At a time when lines of ideological division run particularly deep, it gives me hope to see a poet exploring the nuances of patriotism and pacifism through the voice of a speaker who embraces the duality of her identity as both a wife and also a person defined by much more than her gender or marital status. Though full of men, Hail and Farewell is a book made of everything that a woman is expected to be—beautiful, fecund, and endlessly patient—cast against the surreal landscapes of a homecoming ceremony for returning soldiers or the military family housing that turns strangers into reluctant intimates. Most of all, I’m heartened to see that what I’ve always told my students is true: If there is a story that needs to be told, there is someone who can tell it. And damn, but Abby E. Murray tells this one.” —Keetje Kuipers

“Hail and Farewell is a triumph of womanhood and a reminder that we are all touched by war. The small questions the poems ask about what it means to love, to support, and to find strength in the spaces of everyday are magnified against a backdrop of conflict and by the desire to make something from uncertainty. There is a sense that the world could be upended at any moment, and these poems open those moments and ask us to step closer.” —Dorianne Laux

“Abby E. Murray’s poems bristle with a tough innocence. Like the combat boots-black net outfit she wears in her author photo, the book’s strength is in its contradictions. Filled with the complicated love between a pacifist and a soldier, these poems are tender, painful and wise.” —Erica Goss, Sticks & Stones

“The speaker of these poems is an outsider—a pacifist who can’t be pacified by America’s consumerist fantasy and its ready-made new beginnings (‘Sitting in a Simulated Living Space at the Seattle Ikea’), who cringes at being ‘bribed with jewelry to behave’ (‘Jewelry’), who can’t buy into the mandatory oversimplification of complex situations (‘How to Be Married After Iraq’). But she is also an insider, who knows the challenges of this life too well to waste much energy sitting in judgement.” —Libby Maxey, Literary Mama

“Murray’s poems sometimes grab the opposite poles and pull them together. Sometimes, they live somewhere in a blurry middle or in a completely different place all their own. They are gloriously complicated in the best way.” —Lisa Houlihan Stice, Military Spouse Book Review

“Murray shares her unique (and deeply feminist) take on the pressures, ceremonies, and rites of passage in military life. But it would be a mistake to think this book is only for military spouses. The themes Murray explores will resonate with anyone brave enough to risk loving in the face of loss, anyone who calls B.S. on oppressive social systems, anyone who has felt like an outsider, anyone who opens her heart equally to both the beauty and the pain in this world.” —Cheryl Dumesnil, ESME

“Murray’s first book, the recently published and prize-winning Hail and Farewell, is a collection of quirky, sometimes snarky, but always genuine explorations of Murray’s relations to the Army and its cultural traditions, and with her active-duty soldier husband. It also notably interrogates struggles with pregnancy and parenthood. Some of the latter take place in the context of military family life, but one need not limit oneself to war to talk about conflict.” —Charlie Sherpa, FOB Haiku