"The Ghosts of Monticello: A Recitatif  is a sonically mesmerizing, formally exploratory, lyrically innovative collection full of surprise, despair, tenderness, and complexity.”  

- Caryl Pagel, author of Twice Told

"As the old saying suggests, history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. And one of the rhetorically brutal qualities of rhyme is that it shows us just how close virtue and idealism exist next to vice and savagery—in the same bed if not in the same body. Carmen Gillespie marshals rhyme, refrain, homonym, polyphony and counterpoint to create an ensemble performance that shines considerable light on the psychic tinderbox that was Jefferson's Monticello. The Ghosts of Monticello: A Recitatif is a necessarily haunted book for a helplessly haunted nation.

- Kyle Dargan, author of Honest Engine and Logorrhea Dementia: A Self Diagnosis

"Carmen Gillespie's The Ghosts of Monticello is a testament to the fact that the past is never the past. It continues to throb beneath our present skin whether we want it to or not. This book is a wonderful skewering. This book gives voice to the lesser-known history of Monticello." 

- Charles Rafferty, author of The Smoke of Horses and The Unleashable Dog