In this potent collection of poems, Mer Monson is at once raw and defiant. She invites the reader to kiss the darkness, to untangle from the deceptions of a human world that is too often cloaked in pieties and self-deceptions. Approaching this poetry with open heart, one is left with a sense of rhythm—the intimate rise and fall of breath in a wounded body that is full of grace and awesomely alive.

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Qarrtsiluni is an Inuit word that means sitting together in the dark, waiting for something to happen. It expresses a rich image: uncertainty, togetherness, patience but also expectancy. Mer puts words to this particular stillness of waiting, pouring a balm down each page. These are poems of spacious and unflinching compassion, insight, and invitation.

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When I face struggles in life or I question the enormity of this living malarkey, it is books and writing that have saved me—Open the Bible by Thomas Merton, Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff, Saved by a Poem by Kim Rosen. And now, For the Wounded by Mer Monson. When I read this manuscript, I felt as I had when first reading Rilke's Duino Elegies. Mer has captured that same depth of contemplative power—but in a voice even more resonant to me. Each poem feels like a breath taken after holding too much in for too long—tender, true, and brave. These poems do what only the truest writing can: remind us we are not alone.

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These elegies invite me to slow down, to sip loss like honeyed tea, letting each line linger before it slips inward toward the heart. Some sentences were so profound I had to speak them aloud. This is a book I’ll return to whenever I need to remember the beauty in grief, to feel connected to what makes us deeply human — and to remember that sorrow can also be a doorway to the sacred.

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I had the great privilege of hearing Mer Monson read For The Wounded, but getting to read Mer’s remarkable words, to linger on some extraordinary line, is an equally wonderful gift. As a professional musician I have always loved the phrase, “Where words end, music begins.” In a similar fashion, Mer’s poetry resonates in some deeper, truer part of myself.

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The words on these pages wrapped me in experience, plunged me into the depths of my own humanity and kept me safe, swaddled in their poetry, while I observed that which is too chaotic and raw to look at without a guardian, a guide, an armature to hold me the way these channeled verses did. Thank you, Mer, for taking me in a glass-bottomed boat of poetry to the depths of my inner ocean and back.

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For the Wounded is a profound meditation into being human in a world that can feel indifferent to our struggles and heartaches. I am asked to ponder how beauty, love, and suffering are not only intertwined, but essential to feeling fully alive. This is a book to read in slow, sweet sips, then return to read each piece again, as if for the first time.

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It is a holy thing to witness Mer’s intimacy with herself and with God. She stands in the fire with unflinching grace, offering her truth like a psalm from the marrow. Her words broke something ancient in me. Tears spilled—of recognition, of reverence, of yearning. I drank them like prayer and found myself aching for more.

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These poetic meditations probe the awe and angst of existence. The poetry is beautiful, the honesty startling as each poem petitions and penetrates a self within self. This collection is a heart-rending journey through life and death, grief and love, fear and beauty, hopelessness and comfort, body and soul.

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