Mercurial (Unabridged‪)‬

Mercurial is to be characterized by rapid and unpredictable changing moods. The mercurial have qualities of eloquence and ingenuity. Mercurial people are animated, lively, and quick witted. Subject to sudden changes of mind, the mercurial are unpredictable, variable, and unstable. To be mercurial is to be ever changing, creative, and whimsical.

These poems celebrate Mercuralia, the major festival of the Roman God Mercury, the patron God of eloquence (and thus poetry), communication, and keeper of boundaries referring to his role as bridge between the upper and lower worlds, also the guide of souls to the Underworld.

In his third collection of poetry, Michael Brown looks behind closed doors to reveal harsh truths, marvels at the savage beauty of the world, and has disinhibited poetic conversations with Francis Bacon, Janet Frame, famous rent boys, psychiatric patients, and dead poets.