Grief Poetry

There are many facets to love. It can be all-embracing, passionate, fulfilling, platonic. And when this love is shattered, it gives rise to anguish, hate, anger, jealously, and melancholy. There are times when such powerful emotions must be expressed, for to keep them bottled up inside can render one senseless and unbalanced. What better way to find release than through the age-old medium of poetry? It is the author’s sincere hope that her poetry will bring solace to others who have endured the same tumultuous experiences with love and heartache. Perhaps the sharing of her words will ...

A stunning collection of poems that John Updike wrote during the last seven years of his life. The opening sequence, "Endpoint", is made up of a series of connected poems written on the occasions of his recent birthdays and culminates in his confrontation with his final illness. He looks back on the boy that he was, on the family, the small town, the people, and the circumstances that fed his love of writing, and he finds endless delight and solace in "turning the oddities of life into words".

On Being Human is a compilation of original poems by Ghazala Alam. Written in modern Urdu and English, each poem is introduced by an English preamble detailing her inspirations and insights. Accompanied by English transliteration, her poetry is informed by her experiences as an immigrant, woman, and a person of color.

In Big Man Katie Kemple creates a portrait of fatherhood in the shadow of loss: the untimely death of partners, unresolved trauma as a veteran, and chronic pain. Kemple shows a father moving forward despite it all with the generosity and grace to love and be loved. He's the teacher who gives hitchhiking students a lift to the mall, the dad who chaperones Girl Scout fieldtrips, the husband who clings to the last flame of his wife's life. A man who stayed open to "rocks, sea glass, / shells and pinecones. Small things we / might have passed into his big hands."

Our quoted authority is not the people in white coats but those with a quill, a heart and a soul that can take these feelings of love and loss and with the ink of words put to verse feelings and emotions that can be re-lived and shared by all. As they venture through depression, war, slavery to heartache and the loss of loved ones our eyes may mist and tears gently fall at what collectively we have done, have experienced, have witnessed and lost.

In the early 1990s, eight people living in a small conservative Florida town alleged that Dr. David Acer, their dentist, infected them with HIV. David's gayness, along with his sickly appearance from his own AIDS-related illness, made him the perfect scapegoat and victim of mob mentality. In these early years of the AIDS epidemic, when transmission was little understood, and homophobia rampant, people like David were villainized. Accuser Kimberly Bergalis landed a People magazine cover story, while others went on talk shows and made front page news.

What if grief could become a wild invitation into a practice of radical open-heartedness and intimacy with the world and all of life? That is the question bestselling author and licensed psychotherapist, Annalise Oatman, explores in this collection of poetic diary entries. Unpretentious and characteristically confessional, this collection continually finds the universal within the personal, and finds that the essence of eroticism is a tender reaching towards all that is "outside" oneself.

Stephen C. Pollock's poetry collection Exits explores the beauty and frailty of life, the cycles of nature, and the promise of renewal. Musical and multilayered, the poems in Exits have drawn comparisons to the poetry of Seamus Heaney and the sonnets of William Shakespeare.

Drum-Taps is a collection of poetry written by Walt Whitman during the American Civil War and first published in 1865. Drum-Taps contains poems that bear witness to the violence of war.

Unlike his more famous fellow war poets, Wilfred Owen and Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon survived the First World War. In this collection of 64 poems, first published in 1920, Sassoon portrays the dehumanizing horror of modern warfare with its staggering death toll, while also satirizing the jingoistic fervour of politicians and armchair strategists.

In these poems, Kleber-Diggs names delight in the same breath as loss. Moments suffused with love—teaching his daughter how to drive; watching his grandmother bake a cake; waking beside his beloved to ponder trumpet mechanics—couple with moments of wrenching grief—a father’s life ended by a gun; mourning children draped around their mother’s waist; Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. Even in the refuge-space of dreams, a man calls the police on his Black neighbor.

I often think about our youth. It was indeed a strangely shaped toy, with a short body dragging a very long tail, spreading like wings, refusing to leave. A lamp is still on, but a song has been sung. A play has not ended, a love has reached the end of the road. We salute you. And the new curtain is about to be drawn. Maybe that's what human life is like, ending, starting, starting again, then ending. No matter what, we have to shoulder our suffering and happiness, moving forward, don't turn around.

Joseph Luzzi's harrowing story of his wife's sudden death in a car accident and how Dante's The Divine Comedy helped him to endure his grief, raise their infant daughter, and rediscover love. Where do we turn when we lose everything? In 2007 Joseph Luzzi's wife Katherine was eight and a half months pregnant when she was involved in a fatal car accident. Their daughter, Isabel, was delivered by emergency C-section and somehow survived, even while her mother could not.

In these poems of holding and letting go, Mapother isn't afraid to plumb the depths. Just when you think you can't breathe, she breaks the surface, with you in her gentle hands. In her own words, each line is an homage to the scars that form us.

From My Lips to Your Ears is a collection of raw poetry created by Nicole Higginbotham-Hogue. This empowering collection details the jouirney one goes through regarding grief, love, inspiration, and sadness and represents an honest depiction of life through this poet's eyes.

Brooks Haxton has been writing for years about the connections between human beings and the creatures we find fascinating. Mister Toebones, his new collection, draws its title from a nickname Haxton gives to a daddy longlegs he sees at his father's grave. In another poem, the poet and his mother, in search of a swimming hole, find a copperhead rearing to strike, about to birth its live young. Elsewhere, waist-deep in the Mississippi River, under the Atlantic Ocean, on the cracked ice of a frozen pond, even in outer space, the poet explores forces that seem past endurance.

Clara Jean Beaman Walker was the third of seven children born to Cora and Clarence Beaman in Knoxville, TN, in 1910. Considered to be “Little Mother” by her siblings, she always gave her best to her birth family and to the family she created with her husband, John Albert Walker. Three sons came from this union: Johnny, Clarence, and Henry. A teacher at heart, Jean saw each child before her and helped them navigate home economics, English, and realizing their potential.

If Ollie Schminkey’s Dead Dad Jokes asks the question, “What was it like to watch my father die?”, Where I Dry the Flowers asks “How did watching someone die teach me how to live?” This unrestrained and raw sophomore collection explores themes of grief, healing, and forgiveness while refusing to sacrifice the hard truths that come with addiction, caretaking, and the death of a loved one. Ollie opens their heart to listeners and tells them that these emotions are okay, no matter how conflicting and confusing they may be.

If you've ever experienced heartbreak, Diana Townsend's I Thought I Missed Him is a poetry collection you won't want to miss. With brutal honesty and unflinching emotion, Townsend delves into the toxic and often destructive emotions that arise when a relationship comes to an end. But this isn't just a collection of poems about pain and heartache. I Thought I Missed Him is a journey of self-discovery and self-reflection, as Townsend grapples with the complexities of moving on from someone she once loved. In these pages, you'll find moments of clarity and vulnerability, as well as a rawness ...

From the author's leather-bound book kept locked at the base of his bed, we journey through New York City, chilled farmlands and isolated cabins in the woods. Calloway's solid masculine approach is refreshingly original. We have all felt the warmth of the world around us and we have all felt the cold. This author holds our hand as he leads us down rich passageways of the psyche.