About this item

By Linda Scheller “The Ghosts of 16 Larkin Street is filled with layers of intimacy: familial, ancestral, and godly. These poems guide us masterfully though memory, heart, and thought, cascading down from page to page with full force.” –Ariel Francisco Henriquez Cos, 2026 Hilary Tham Capital Collection judge and author of All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins. Linda Scheller's fourth collection explores memory, family, home--all the ways these shape us, fail us, lift us up. Says Cyrus Cassells, "A wizard at revelatory domestic portraiture and telltale family incidents, Scheller reconstructs home and examines, with artfulness and agility, her German American heritage-not out of mere allegiance and nostalgia but in an intrepid quest for compassion, clarity, and authentic identity." “The Ghosts of 16 Larkin Street is filled with stark, realis:c, personal yet quite universal poems that paint an in:mate portrait of iden:ty, interpersonal struggles, loss, family, and the ever-present need for empathy.” --John Sibley Williams, author of As One Fire Consumes Another “This is an honest, sobering, revelatory book.” --Lee Herrick, California Poet Laureate, author of In Praise of Late Wonder: New and Selected Poems “Scheller conveys a fearless and poignant sense of resilience and hard-won candor passed on as shareable wisdom.” --Cyrus Cassels, 2021 Texas Poet Laureate, author of Lorca to the Umpteenth PowerLee Herrick adds, "This powerful memoir-in-verse charts the generational haunting of this brave poet's lineage. From a family tragedy to secrets, depression, and recovery, Scheller has done the difficult work of engaging her ghosts. About her mother, she writes, 'Before hanging up, I force myself to chirp/love you, short for I wish I could love you.' This is how memory liberates. This is an honest, sobering, revelatory book."