Melancholy & Spirits

Benjamin Gantcher

I saw the pale rushes with plumes, the last wordof last year at this threshold where the bigpicture windows copied us in black and gold,disillusioned, hopeful, heartsick, inconsequential.Walking the frozen deck, making repairsto the caul of light, you guard us with candlesand blessings of hemlock in the glisteringabsent-minded and marauding winds. A knobblyfoal leg, a wedge of cake and—I stubbornly clingto the mistake overheard in the craving—pálinkapale green flame of clinking spring

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Headshot of Benjamin Gantcher

Benjamin Gantcher is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of a LABA fellowship as well as residencies from the UCrossFoundation and the Omi International Arts Center. He is the author of the poetry collections The Coronation of the Ghost (2025), SnowFarmer (2017), a finalist in several contests, and the poetry chapbook Strings of Math and Custom (2013). Gantcher’s first poetry manuscript, If a Lettuce, earned finalist honors in the National Poetry Series and Bright Hill Press contests. His poems and essays have appeared in many journals, including Tin House, Slate, Rhino, Guernica, The Brooklyn Rail, and DIAGRAM. Gantcher was Poet of the Week at Brooklyn Poets and is a former poetry editor of failbetter. He is the editor, publisher and designer of unbound books, “free, downloadable, printable, foldable, downright handsome books,” that can be found @benjamingantcher, at the unbound books Substack, and at https://gantcher.wordpress.com/unbound-books/.

Cover of The Coronation of the Ghost

BOOKSHOP

The Coronation of the Ghost
Cornerstone Press

Stevens Point, Wisconsin

University​ of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

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"Ben Gantcher's poems are located in a distinctly urban landscape that is at the same time a riotous natural habitat-because of course; that's how it is. These poems toggle back and forth so deftly between registers—high and low, urban and natural, plainspoken and formal. The cacophony feels and sounds like riding the subway, and like riding the subway, these poems keep you guessing, keep you on your toes. The sheer range of THINGS in these poems makes each page a little cabinet of wonders."
—Matthew Rohrer, author of Army of Giants

"The entire book shape-shifts beyond the template of text, because it's late and the need is terrifying—and aren't we and our books ghosts already? Visceral, humane, contrarian, often wildly funny or bracingly matter-of-fact, The Coronation of the Ghost is brilliant."
—D. Nurkse, author of A Country of Strangers

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