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The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing
“Kevin Young has thoughtfully gathered many of these sorrowful perambulations and grievous plummets.” -Billy Collins
The Art of Losing is the first anthology of its kind, delivering poetry with a purpose. Editor Kevin Young has introduced and selected 150 devastatingly beautiful poems that embrace the pain and heartbreak of mourning. Divided into five sections (Reckoning, Remembrance, Rituals, Recovery, and Redemption), with poems by some of our most beloved poets as well as the best of the current generation of poets, The Art of Losing is the ideal gift for a loved one in a time of need and for use by therapists, ministers, rabbis, and palliative care workers who tend to those who are experiencing loss.
Among the poets Elizabeth Alexander, W. H. Auden, Amy Clampitt, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Louise Gluck, Ted Hughes, Galway Kinnell, Kenneth Koch, Philip Larkin, Li-Young Lee, Philip Levine, Marianne Moore, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Robert Pinsky, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, Derek Walcott, and James Wright.
The Art of Losing is the first anthology of its kind, delivering poetry with a purpose. Editor Kevin Young has introduced and selected 150 devastatingly beautiful poems that embrace the pain and heartbreak of mourning. Divided into five sections (Reckoning, Remembrance, Rituals, Recovery, and Redemption), with poems by some of our most beloved poets as well as the best of the current generation of poets, The Art of Losing is the ideal gift for a loved one in a time of need and for use by therapists, ministers, rabbis, and palliative care workers who tend to those who are experiencing loss.
Among the poets Elizabeth Alexander, W. H. Auden, Amy Clampitt, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Louise Gluck, Ted Hughes, Galway Kinnell, Kenneth Koch, Philip Larkin, Li-Young Lee, Philip Levine, Marianne Moore, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Robert Pinsky, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke, Anne Sexton, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, Derek Walcott, and James Wright.
336 pages, Paperback
First published March 16, 2010
189 people are currently reading
1813 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Young
87 books373 followersKevin Young is an American poet heavily influenced by the poet Langston Hughes and the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Young graduated from Harvard College in 1992, was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (1992-1994), and received his MFA from Brown University. While in Boston and Providence, he was part of the African-American poetry group, The Dark Room Collective.
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Young is the author of Most Way Home, To Repel Ghosts, Jelly Roll, Black Maria, For The Confederate Dead, Dear Darkness, and editor of Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers; Blues Poems; Jazz Poems and John Berryman's Selected Poems.
His Black Cat Blues, originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, was included in The Best American Poetry 2005. Young's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines. In 2007, he served as guest editor for an issue of Ploughshares. He has written on art and artists for museums in Los Angeles and Minneapolis.
His 2003 book of poems Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award.
After stints at the University of Georgia and Indiana University, Young now teaches writing at Emory University, where he is the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing, as well as the curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, a large collection of first and rare editions of poetry in English.
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Young is the author of Most Way Home, To Repel Ghosts, Jelly Roll, Black Maria, For The Confederate Dead, Dear Darkness, and editor of Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers; Blues Poems; Jazz Poems and John Berryman's Selected Poems.
His Black Cat Blues, originally published in The Virginia Quarterly Review, was included in The Best American Poetry 2005. Young's poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other literary magazines. In 2007, he served as guest editor for an issue of Ploughshares. He has written on art and artists for museums in Los Angeles and Minneapolis.
His 2003 book of poems Jelly Roll was a finalist for the National Book Award.
After stints at the University of Georgia and Indiana University, Young now teaches writing at Emory University, where he is the Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing, as well as the curator of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library, a large collection of first and rare editions of poetry in English.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews
April 13, 2024
I loved this death and grief-related collection of poems. Though not going through a grief right now, this suited my somewhat melancholy state of mind. Grief- and losses- take many forms, not all of them death though that is the predominant theme here. I loved the infinite variety of quality poems. Too many to mention without feeling I might leave someone out. The quote by Faulkner: "I would rather feel grief, than feel nothing" really stays with me. I think I agree with it.
Update: I find it interesting that in this review, I stated that I was "not going through a grief" at the moment. Though this was written in 2020. Trauma? A form of grief?
Update: I find it interesting that in this review, I stated that I was "not going through a grief" at the moment. Though this was written in 2020. Trauma? A form of grief?
January 25, 2013
~Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.~ William Faulkner
This collection started off promising, but overall was ok, I didn't love it. I wonder if the editor, being a male losing a father, was just attracted to these poems versus others that might have been more meaningful for me, a woman who lost her mother. For example, he has some nice Mary Oliver ones, but where is Oxygen or In Blackwater Woods?
Oxygen
Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its home, the soul.
So the merciful, noisy machine
stands in our house working away in its
lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel
before the fire, stirring with a
stick of iron, letting the logs
lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,
are in your usual position, leaning on your
right shoulder which aches
all day. You are breathing
patiently; it is a
beautiful sound. It is
your life, which is so close
to my own that I would not know
where to drop the knife of
separation. And what does this have to do
with love, except
everything? Now the fire rises
and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
roses of flame. Then it settles
to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.
Where is In Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
~ Mary Oliver ~
But again, there were powerful gems here and there. With my fresh loss, only one brought me to tears, and it was one I knew (Auden’s Funeral Blues). I had also run across in the library a book from Adrienne Rich, Ted Kooser and Jane Kenyon, so I knew some of theirs. However, I might be looking for specific poems about losing a mother, or from a female point of view, and this collection was too broad for me. I also was there for the whole process, it was not sudden, it was not simple, it went fast, it was not long and while it took little time, it took all my thought like Adrienne Rich says. I so loved the sun coming into the room, like Wilfred Owen writes in “Futility”: “If anything could rouse him now, the kind old sun will know.” Anne Sexton writes in “Lament:” Someone is dead./ Even the trees know it/…I think/… I think I could have stopped it,/ if I’d been firm as a nurse/ or noticed the neck of the driver/…or if I’d held my napkin over my mouth./ I think I could…/if I’d been different, or wise, or calm…” That is so powerful for all the emotions going through my mind during the process, if only I had (insert a million things.)
Maybe in time, they will speak differently to me.
Robert Pinksy, Dying:
Phrases die out: first everyone forgets
What doornails are; then after certain decades
As a dead metaphor, “dead as a doornail” flickers
And fades away. But someone I know is dying-
And though one might say glibly, “everyone is,”
The different pace makes the difference absolute.
Ted Hughes, Do Not Pick Up the Telephone:
Death invented the phone so it looks like the altar of death
Do not worship the telephone
It drags its worshippers into actual graves
With a variety of devices, through a variety of disguised voices
Sit godless when you hear the religious wail of the telephone
Do not think your house is a hide-out it is a telephone
Do not think you walk your own road, you walk down a telephone
Do no think you sleep in the hand of god you sleep in the
mouthpiece of a telephone
Albert Goldbarth writes of his father and the boy who became his father, as one continuous substance that died together and vanished, while light remains, travelling its “famous 186,000 miles per second/to this still gold bar/ on the floor of the darkness.” I wondered if my mom travelled backwards towards death, if she thought my cousins were her sister or I looked like her mother. I placed photos from her whole life around her, hoping if so, they brought comfort. Kevin Young’s “Bereavement” talks about his father’s dogs and their grief as “colossal & forgetful” as they “seek his voice, their names,” but by the end of the day, “they seem to unremember everything.” My mom’s beloved dog was strangely indifferent to the entire process, whereas my sister’s was trying to comfort us all.
Ted Kooser writes in “Mourners” about the space around a funeral, the space where people fill it with their voices, quiet and calm, and their touches: “They came this afternoon to say goodbye,/ but now they keep saying hello and hello,/ peering into each other’s faces,/ slow to let go of each other’s hands.” I can tell you unreservedly, this is true, I held on to hands and held hugs longer than ever before. I felt that space in such a beautiful way. He writes again in “Father” about a hypochondriac father and how miserable his siblings, his father, and he would be if he had lived to 97; how he misses him every day, but that it was a kindness, and preservation of dignity. “On this day each year you loved to relate /that the moment of your birth/ your mother glanced out the window/and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today/ lilacs are blooming in side yards / all over Iowa, still welcoming you.
Mary Oliver, before the love of her life died, wrote poems about her parents’ death, and I prefer the later ones. However, “Ice” perfectly captures the need to save all the things of your loved one, even the useless, obsolete “ice-grips” her father spent so much time making during his last winter. Her “When Death Comes:”
…when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
W.H. Auden, Funeral Blues:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Joel Brouwer, The Spots:
Appeared to her in Massachusetts. Purple and green.
And immediately
vertigo rushed up like an angry dog
to a fence. She went white, fell down the well
of herself and wept.
Late at night, in the motels, when she'd fallen
asleep, I cried too. I whispered curses to the awkward stacks
of white towels. Hating anything out of balance. Hating
her, her new failure. In the mornings
my checkbook voice returned, low and soft. For an angry dog
whose yard you wish to cross.
We both hated my balance, hated her imbalance, needed each.
Sudafed, acupuncture, allergist.
Yoga, chewing gum, Zoloft, Chinese tea.
She was afraid of going blind. She constantly described
colors and shapes, as if I had gone blind.
They turned orange. They floated. They darted.
We went arm in arm without passion, like elderly French.
Internist neurologist ophthalmologist.
Otolaryngologist neurologist psychiatrist.
She would not allow the warm towel over her face in the MRI.
The nurses seethed. She set her jaw and vanished
into the gleaming white tube. The machine banged like hammers
on a sunken ship's hull. She listened to Beethoven through
headphones.
The magnetism passed through her mind in waves,
like wind through chestnut trees, touching
everything and changing nothing. Her courage! If courage
is what stones have. My God, how I loved her. Badly.
The spots were like metaphors. They told us something
by showing us something else. And so I believed they
were metaphors.
They were not.
Grace Paley, “I needed to talk to my sister:”
I needed to talk to my sister
talk to her on the telephone I mean
just as I used to every morning
in the evening too whenever the
grandchildren said a sentence that
clasped both our hearts
I called her phone rang four times
you can imagine my breath stopped then
there was a terrible telephonic noise
a voice said this number is no
longer in use how wonderful I
thought I can
call again they have not yet assigned
her number to another person despite
two years of absence due to death
This collection started off promising, but overall was ok, I didn't love it. I wonder if the editor, being a male losing a father, was just attracted to these poems versus others that might have been more meaningful for me, a woman who lost her mother. For example, he has some nice Mary Oliver ones, but where is Oxygen or In Blackwater Woods?
Oxygen
Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its home, the soul.
So the merciful, noisy machine
stands in our house working away in its
lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel
before the fire, stirring with a
stick of iron, letting the logs
lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,
are in your usual position, leaning on your
right shoulder which aches
all day. You are breathing
patiently; it is a
beautiful sound. It is
your life, which is so close
to my own that I would not know
where to drop the knife of
separation. And what does this have to do
with love, except
everything? Now the fire rises
and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
roses of flame. Then it settles
to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.
Where is In Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
~ Mary Oliver ~
But again, there were powerful gems here and there. With my fresh loss, only one brought me to tears, and it was one I knew (Auden’s Funeral Blues). I had also run across in the library a book from Adrienne Rich, Ted Kooser and Jane Kenyon, so I knew some of theirs. However, I might be looking for specific poems about losing a mother, or from a female point of view, and this collection was too broad for me. I also was there for the whole process, it was not sudden, it was not simple, it went fast, it was not long and while it took little time, it took all my thought like Adrienne Rich says. I so loved the sun coming into the room, like Wilfred Owen writes in “Futility”: “If anything could rouse him now, the kind old sun will know.” Anne Sexton writes in “Lament:” Someone is dead./ Even the trees know it/…I think/… I think I could have stopped it,/ if I’d been firm as a nurse/ or noticed the neck of the driver/…or if I’d held my napkin over my mouth./ I think I could…/if I’d been different, or wise, or calm…” That is so powerful for all the emotions going through my mind during the process, if only I had (insert a million things.)
Maybe in time, they will speak differently to me.
Robert Pinksy, Dying:
Phrases die out: first everyone forgets
What doornails are; then after certain decades
As a dead metaphor, “dead as a doornail” flickers
And fades away. But someone I know is dying-
And though one might say glibly, “everyone is,”
The different pace makes the difference absolute.
Ted Hughes, Do Not Pick Up the Telephone:
Death invented the phone so it looks like the altar of death
Do not worship the telephone
It drags its worshippers into actual graves
With a variety of devices, through a variety of disguised voices
Sit godless when you hear the religious wail of the telephone
Do not think your house is a hide-out it is a telephone
Do not think you walk your own road, you walk down a telephone
Do no think you sleep in the hand of god you sleep in the
mouthpiece of a telephone
Albert Goldbarth writes of his father and the boy who became his father, as one continuous substance that died together and vanished, while light remains, travelling its “famous 186,000 miles per second/to this still gold bar/ on the floor of the darkness.” I wondered if my mom travelled backwards towards death, if she thought my cousins were her sister or I looked like her mother. I placed photos from her whole life around her, hoping if so, they brought comfort. Kevin Young’s “Bereavement” talks about his father’s dogs and their grief as “colossal & forgetful” as they “seek his voice, their names,” but by the end of the day, “they seem to unremember everything.” My mom’s beloved dog was strangely indifferent to the entire process, whereas my sister’s was trying to comfort us all.
Ted Kooser writes in “Mourners” about the space around a funeral, the space where people fill it with their voices, quiet and calm, and their touches: “They came this afternoon to say goodbye,/ but now they keep saying hello and hello,/ peering into each other’s faces,/ slow to let go of each other’s hands.” I can tell you unreservedly, this is true, I held on to hands and held hugs longer than ever before. I felt that space in such a beautiful way. He writes again in “Father” about a hypochondriac father and how miserable his siblings, his father, and he would be if he had lived to 97; how he misses him every day, but that it was a kindness, and preservation of dignity. “On this day each year you loved to relate /that the moment of your birth/ your mother glanced out the window/and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today/ lilacs are blooming in side yards / all over Iowa, still welcoming you.
Mary Oliver, before the love of her life died, wrote poems about her parents’ death, and I prefer the later ones. However, “Ice” perfectly captures the need to save all the things of your loved one, even the useless, obsolete “ice-grips” her father spent so much time making during his last winter. Her “When Death Comes:”
…when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
W.H. Auden, Funeral Blues:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever, I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Joel Brouwer, The Spots:
Appeared to her in Massachusetts. Purple and green.
And immediately
vertigo rushed up like an angry dog
to a fence. She went white, fell down the well
of herself and wept.
Late at night, in the motels, when she'd fallen
asleep, I cried too. I whispered curses to the awkward stacks
of white towels. Hating anything out of balance. Hating
her, her new failure. In the mornings
my checkbook voice returned, low and soft. For an angry dog
whose yard you wish to cross.
We both hated my balance, hated her imbalance, needed each.
Sudafed, acupuncture, allergist.
Yoga, chewing gum, Zoloft, Chinese tea.
She was afraid of going blind. She constantly described
colors and shapes, as if I had gone blind.
They turned orange. They floated. They darted.
We went arm in arm without passion, like elderly French.
Internist neurologist ophthalmologist.
Otolaryngologist neurologist psychiatrist.
She would not allow the warm towel over her face in the MRI.
The nurses seethed. She set her jaw and vanished
into the gleaming white tube. The machine banged like hammers
on a sunken ship's hull. She listened to Beethoven through
headphones.
The magnetism passed through her mind in waves,
like wind through chestnut trees, touching
everything and changing nothing. Her courage! If courage
is what stones have. My God, how I loved her. Badly.
The spots were like metaphors. They told us something
by showing us something else. And so I believed they
were metaphors.
They were not.
Grace Paley, “I needed to talk to my sister:”
I needed to talk to my sister
talk to her on the telephone I mean
just as I used to every morning
in the evening too whenever the
grandchildren said a sentence that
clasped both our hearts
I called her phone rang four times
you can imagine my breath stopped then
there was a terrible telephonic noise
a voice said this number is no
longer in use how wonderful I
thought I can
call again they have not yet assigned
her number to another person despite
two years of absence due to death
October 10, 2019
There are some hauntingly beautiful poems in this collection. The classics, like Emily Dickinson and Auden are represented as well as some lesser knowns. Those are the unexpected poems that express your emotions allowing you to surrender to your feelings of loss. You might want to seek out some silence, read on and find those that grab you. Read and reflect. Sit for awhile in your silence. The death of someone you know, the death of a family member and even the death of a stranger may raise questions, worries and regrets. Death brings on grief. The grief that, over time, ebbs and flows. One never knows what may bring those memories crashing around, does one? I found three poems in here that opened a door I usually keep shut. Poems that get you on a gut level. These poems brought me the comfort of shared feelings and helped to wash away some of the sadness of death. You are certain, like me, to find a poem that invites you to meet yourself in the midst of your deep grief. A book to keep around for those times you need to know someone out there understands.
September 4, 2012
I properly finished this book today, going through a huge part of more than half the book at one go, and it was an intensive experience - I kept tearing up; the poems were so heartfelt, so necessary. And it stood out to me, how arbitrary life is, and utterly powerless - that all we can ever do is get through it, dealing with things as they come along, losing and recovering sensation over and over again. The cyclic nature of this is sometimes so overwhelming that you want to call life out on its lie, accuse it of being meaningless despite its many glorious moments, but what would then be the point of that? Life still goes on. It always does, despite yourself. I guess that's what's both tragic and joyous about it at the same time.
September 2, 2015
This is a wonderful collection that has taken me months to wander through, to savor. Poetry seems to be read by fewer and fewer, that surmise supported by the shrinking shelf space dedicated to it in most bookstores (and the quizzical looks from friends as I mention I read it!). And that's a shame, because Poetry hits you on an emotional level that Prose often doesn't, at least in so many words. Who can read "Otherwise" by Jane Kenyon and not be surprised by a sucker punch to the gut? Many say they "just don't get poetry", and some poems do come with some pretty obscure references. But. . . this group of poems is not like that. It is highly accessible and begs to have you keep turning the pages--even as you want to pause to let each one sink in.
April 13, 2020
““After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”
EMILY DICKINSON
‘.....
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone—
This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
First— Chill— then Stupor— then the letting go—‘
D.H.Lawrence
“.....
“Or the wind shakes a ravel of light
Over the dead-black river,
Or last night’s echoings
Make the daybreak shiver:
I feel the silence waiting
To sip them all up again,
In its last completeness drinking
Down the noise of men.‘
EMILY DICKINSON
‘.....
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone—
This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
First— Chill— then Stupor— then the letting go—‘
D.H.Lawrence
“.....
“Or the wind shakes a ravel of light
Over the dead-black river,
Or last night’s echoings
Make the daybreak shiver:
I feel the silence waiting
To sip them all up again,
In its last completeness drinking
Down the noise of men.‘
Read
June 6, 2021“...I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.”
Czeslaw Milosz
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.”
Czeslaw Milosz
March 27, 2017
My friend Andrew M sent me this book in the mail as a gift, the first thing of any kind he had given me for years, and I was grateful, don't get me wrong, but as I am now close to 60, I wondered what he had in mind, and still don't know. All he said was, " I just thought it was the kind of book you would like." A themed book on the subject of grieving I like better is Naomi Shihab Nye's poetry collection, "What Have I lost?" which is not necessarily as much about death as Young's book is, but both deal in myriad ways with inevitable loss and what to do about it.I was initially put off by some of the expected great chestnuts in Young's collection, "Do Not Go Gentle," etc and it's not because they are not great poems, but just because i wanted to read new stuff almost exclusively, which is one of the things I liked about Nye's anthology. But over time, I liked much of what I read, old and new. I'll note my faves later. One thing I noted as I read, that this i.e. edited by an African American poet, so I am reading more poems by black folks... turnabout's fair play, in a way, since almost all the edited volumes of poems are by... and about white poets... so I liked that, met more black poets I had not known,, thanks K Young. A good and useful book, as we all face death, grief, and why not face it with the help of poetry? The unimaginable.... dealt with through the edge of language, the ineffable. He arranges the poems he catalogues from grief to healing, in four sections, and I didn't need that division, really, but maybe some would like that move to recovery. He also adds a section where he catalogues them differently: lose your mom? Here's mom death poems... A fine collection and what not have collections about lots of stuff like this? MOstly there are LOVE poem collections, of course. I have two baseball poetry collections... oh, and one BASEBALL haiku poetry book (!) but I am glad to have two grief books... as you get older, you need them more and more, so thanks, Andrew...
June 8, 2015
What a wonderful condolence gift this book would be. These poems should be shared at funerals and wakes or read privately through the months of heartache. Poetry lovers will want this book on their home shelf to enjoy again and again. Kevin Young’s Book of Hours showed the world his gift for putting eulogy and grief on paper, and he used that insight in editing this collection. At the best funerals, we remember our loved ones with both tears and laughter, and these poems contain that wholeness of being human.
Too many anthologies go back to the same old, same old, dead, white male poets and poems that are dense with dated language. Young chose to focus on more accessible, more relevant, and more modern poems. With only a few exceptions, he pulled together twentieth and twenty-first century poems. For once, women and minority writers are well represented. There’s something everyone can relate to.
Many of my favorite poems are here: “Otherwise” and “Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon, “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden, “Wild Geese” and by Mary Oliver, “Mourners” by Ted Kooser, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, and for a smile, “The Dead” by Billy Collins. With nearly 300 pages of poetry, Young was able to cover an incredible range. You’re sure to meet some authors you don’t know well. There’s also a convenient index by subject to help those searching for a single-poem to read at a service or send to a friend.
Too many anthologies go back to the same old, same old, dead, white male poets and poems that are dense with dated language. Young chose to focus on more accessible, more relevant, and more modern poems. With only a few exceptions, he pulled together twentieth and twenty-first century poems. For once, women and minority writers are well represented. There’s something everyone can relate to.
Many of my favorite poems are here: “Otherwise” and “Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon, “Funeral Blues” by W. H. Auden, “Wild Geese” and by Mary Oliver, “Mourners” by Ted Kooser, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, and for a smile, “The Dead” by Billy Collins. With nearly 300 pages of poetry, Young was able to cover an incredible range. You’re sure to meet some authors you don’t know well. There’s also a convenient index by subject to help those searching for a single-poem to read at a service or send to a friend.
June 4, 2011
I have about 47 slips of paper marking all the poems I like in this collection. If this weren't a library book, I'd have marked it up well. Divided into six sections: Reckoning, Regret, Remembrance, Ritual, Recovery, Redemption, there's, well, something for everyone, depending on, uh, what you're looking for. Only this isn't a self-help book of course. In here I found poets I hadn't heard of before whose work I'll investigate and poets I studied in school whose poems I was glad to read again. So it's a comfort, if that's what you want, and it's an accessible volume of worthwhile poetry. How to pick one example?
The Morning Baking by Carolyn Forché
Grandma, come back, I forgot
How much lard for these rolls
Think you can put yourself in the ground
Like plain potatoes and grow in Ohio?
I am damn sick of getting fat like you
Think you can lie through your Slovak?
Tell filthy stories about the blood sausage?
Pish-pish nights at the virgin in Detroit?
I blame your raising me up for my Slav tongue
You beat me up out back, taught me to dance
I'll tell you I don't remember any kind of bread
Your wavy loaves of flesh
Stink through my sleep
The stars on your silk robes
But I'm glad I'll look when I'm old
Like a gypsy dusha hauling milk
The Morning Baking by Carolyn Forché
Grandma, come back, I forgot
How much lard for these rolls
Think you can put yourself in the ground
Like plain potatoes and grow in Ohio?
I am damn sick of getting fat like you
Think you can lie through your Slovak?
Tell filthy stories about the blood sausage?
Pish-pish nights at the virgin in Detroit?
I blame your raising me up for my Slav tongue
You beat me up out back, taught me to dance
I'll tell you I don't remember any kind of bread
Your wavy loaves of flesh
Stink through my sleep
The stars on your silk robes
But I'm glad I'll look when I'm old
Like a gypsy dusha hauling milk
May 17, 2018
Grief recurs. Though it may help to recognize "stages" of grieving, many of us have been surprised by tears long after the first anguish of loss has receded. Not only anniversaries of deaths and other losses but small triggers--a smell, a song, a familiar laugh--can reawaken old sorrow. At those times it is a great gift to be able to receive and recite words that provide a place to put the pain. The poems in this beautifully arranged collection are a rich offering of language found and formed by human lament. They cover a span of centuries, mingling old and new voices in a kind of fugue as one poem leads to another, elegantly reiterating what we know and share, reaching into new recesses of loss and probing in new ways the mystery of death. I would love to give this collection to everyone I know who is grieving. It was given to us in a time of great loss, and every time sorrow recurs, I am grateful once again for the compassionate imagination of the editor who brought it together.
September 22, 2021
È un bel libro di poesie che affronta tematiche del lutto e le varie fasi. La parte che mi ha dato di più *leggere tra le righe: la parte che mi ha fatto soffrire di più* è stata la prima. Ma poi comunque ho sempre trovato delle poesie che mi hanno comunicato qualcosa, che mi hanno trasmesso e fatto provare emozioni. Quindi se leggete poesie, e se leggete in lingua (non è stato tradotto in italiano, almeno per ora) ve lo consiglio.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
October 30, 2020
A few favorites here, but a lot that didn't hit the mark.
"Wait" by Galway Kinnell
Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.
"Grief" by Matthew Dickman
When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla
you must count yourself lucky.
You must offer her what’s left
of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish
you must put aside
and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,
her eyes moving from the clock
to the television and back again.
I am not afraid. She has been here before
and now I can recognize her gait
as she approaches the house.
Some nights, when I know she’s coming,
I unlock the door, lie down on my back,
and count her steps
from the street to the porch.
Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,
tells me to write down
everyone I have ever known,
and we separate them between the living and the dead
so she can pick each name at random.
I play her favorite Willie Nelson album
because she misses Texas
but I don’t ask why.
She hums a little,
the way my brother does when he gardens.
We sit for an hour
while she tells me how unreasonable I’ve been,
crying in the check-out line,
refusing to eat, refusing to shower,
all the smoking and all the drinking.
Eventually she puts one of her heavy
purple arms around me, leans
her head against mine,
and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.
So I tell her,
things are feeling romantic.
She pulls another name, this time
from the dead,
and turns to me in that way that parents do
so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.
Romantic? She says,
reading the name out loud, slowly
so I am aware of each syllable, each vowel
wrapping around the bones like new muscle,
the sound of that person’s body
and how reckless it is,
how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.
"Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees going nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
"My Heart" by Frank O'Hara
I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don't prefer one "strain" to another.
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says "That's
not like Frank!," all to the good! I
don't wear brown and grey suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart—
you can't plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.
"One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
"Lament" by Louise Gluck
Suddenly, after you die, those friends
who never agreed about anything
agree about your character.
They’re like a houseful of singers rehearsing
the same score:
you were just, you were kind, you lived a fortunate life.
No harmony. No counterpoint. Except
they’re not performers;
real tears are shed.
Luckily, you’re dead; otherwise
you’d be overcome with revulsion.
But when that’s passed,
when the guests begin filing out, wiping their eyes
because, after a day like this,
shut in with orthodoxy,
the sun’s amazingly bright,
though it’s late afternoon, September—
when the exodus begins,
that’s when you’d feel
pangs of envy.
Your friends the living embrace one another,
gossip a little on the sidewalk
as the sun sinks, and the evening breeze
ruffles the women’s shawls—
this, this, is the meaning of
“a fortunate life”: it means
to exist in the present.
"After Your Death" by Natasha Tretheway
First, I emptied the closets of your clothes,
threw out the bowl of fruit, bruised
rom your touch, left empty the jars
you bought for preserves. The next morning,
birds rustled the fruit trees, and later
when I twisted a ripe fig loose from its stem,
I found it half eaten, the other side
already rotting, or—like another I plucked
and split open—being taken rom the inside:
a swarm of insects hollowing it. I’m too late,
again, another space emptied by loss.
Tomorrow, the bowl I have yet to fill.
"Water" by Philip Larkin
If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.
Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;
My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,
And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.
"Grief" by Stephen Dobyns
Trying to remember you
is like carrying water
in my hands a long distance
across sand. Somewhere people are waiting.
They have drunk nothing for days.
Your name was the food I lived on;
now my mouth is full of dirt and ash.
To say your name was to be surrounded
by feathers and silk; now, reaching out,
I touch glass and barbed wire.
Your name was the thread connecting my life;
now I am fragments on a tailor's floor.
I was dancing when I
learned of your death; may
my feet be severed from my body.
"Sea Canes" by Derek Walcott
Half my friends are dead.
I will make you new ones, said earth.
No, give me them back, as they were, instead,
with faults and all, I cried.
Tonight I can snatch their talk
from the faint surf's drone
through the canes, but I cannot walk
on the moonlit leaves of ocean
down that white road alone,
or float with the dreaming motion
of owls leaving earth's load.
O earth, the number of friends you keep
exceeds those left to be loved.
The sea canes by the cliff flash green and silver;
they were the seraph lances of my faith,
but out of what is lost grows something stronger
that has the rational radiance of stone,
enduring moonlight, further than despair,
strong as the wind, that through dividing canes
brings those we love before us, as they were,
with faults and all, not nobler, just there.
"Wait" by Galway Kinnell
Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.
"Grief" by Matthew Dickman
When grief comes to you as a purple gorilla
you must count yourself lucky.
You must offer her what’s left
of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish
you must put aside
and make her a place to sit at the foot of your bed,
her eyes moving from the clock
to the television and back again.
I am not afraid. She has been here before
and now I can recognize her gait
as she approaches the house.
Some nights, when I know she’s coming,
I unlock the door, lie down on my back,
and count her steps
from the street to the porch.
Tonight she brings a pencil and a ream of paper,
tells me to write down
everyone I have ever known,
and we separate them between the living and the dead
so she can pick each name at random.
I play her favorite Willie Nelson album
because she misses Texas
but I don’t ask why.
She hums a little,
the way my brother does when he gardens.
We sit for an hour
while she tells me how unreasonable I’ve been,
crying in the check-out line,
refusing to eat, refusing to shower,
all the smoking and all the drinking.
Eventually she puts one of her heavy
purple arms around me, leans
her head against mine,
and all of a sudden things are feeling romantic.
So I tell her,
things are feeling romantic.
She pulls another name, this time
from the dead,
and turns to me in that way that parents do
so you feel embarrassed or ashamed of something.
Romantic? She says,
reading the name out loud, slowly
so I am aware of each syllable, each vowel
wrapping around the bones like new muscle,
the sound of that person’s body
and how reckless it is,
how careless that his name is in one pile and not the other.
"Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees going nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
"My Heart" by Frank O'Hara
I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don't prefer one "strain" to another.
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says "That's
not like Frank!," all to the good! I
don't wear brown and grey suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart—
you can't plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.
"One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
"Lament" by Louise Gluck
Suddenly, after you die, those friends
who never agreed about anything
agree about your character.
They’re like a houseful of singers rehearsing
the same score:
you were just, you were kind, you lived a fortunate life.
No harmony. No counterpoint. Except
they’re not performers;
real tears are shed.
Luckily, you’re dead; otherwise
you’d be overcome with revulsion.
But when that’s passed,
when the guests begin filing out, wiping their eyes
because, after a day like this,
shut in with orthodoxy,
the sun’s amazingly bright,
though it’s late afternoon, September—
when the exodus begins,
that’s when you’d feel
pangs of envy.
Your friends the living embrace one another,
gossip a little on the sidewalk
as the sun sinks, and the evening breeze
ruffles the women’s shawls—
this, this, is the meaning of
“a fortunate life”: it means
to exist in the present.
"After Your Death" by Natasha Tretheway
First, I emptied the closets of your clothes,
threw out the bowl of fruit, bruised
rom your touch, left empty the jars
you bought for preserves. The next morning,
birds rustled the fruit trees, and later
when I twisted a ripe fig loose from its stem,
I found it half eaten, the other side
already rotting, or—like another I plucked
and split open—being taken rom the inside:
a swarm of insects hollowing it. I’m too late,
again, another space emptied by loss.
Tomorrow, the bowl I have yet to fill.
"Water" by Philip Larkin
If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.
Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;
My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,
And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.
"Grief" by Stephen Dobyns
Trying to remember you
is like carrying water
in my hands a long distance
across sand. Somewhere people are waiting.
They have drunk nothing for days.
Your name was the food I lived on;
now my mouth is full of dirt and ash.
To say your name was to be surrounded
by feathers and silk; now, reaching out,
I touch glass and barbed wire.
Your name was the thread connecting my life;
now I am fragments on a tailor's floor.
I was dancing when I
learned of your death; may
my feet be severed from my body.
"Sea Canes" by Derek Walcott
Half my friends are dead.
I will make you new ones, said earth.
No, give me them back, as they were, instead,
with faults and all, I cried.
Tonight I can snatch their talk
from the faint surf's drone
through the canes, but I cannot walk
on the moonlit leaves of ocean
down that white road alone,
or float with the dreaming motion
of owls leaving earth's load.
O earth, the number of friends you keep
exceeds those left to be loved.
The sea canes by the cliff flash green and silver;
they were the seraph lances of my faith,
but out of what is lost grows something stronger
that has the rational radiance of stone,
enduring moonlight, further than despair,
strong as the wind, that through dividing canes
brings those we love before us, as they were,
with faults and all, not nobler, just there.
July 12, 2021
i recently lost a co-worker of mine in the most tragic of circumstances. after hearing the news, i could feel my body drawing me towards poetry as a healing mechanism. however, i just couldn’t find the right poems. this collection was exactly what i needed. it follows several different phases of loss and i found this helpful in truly comprehending my emotions. hearing from so many different poets allowed me to connect with others who understood the feelings i wasn’t even really aware i was feeling. this book is also of course not just a one and done thing. i’ll be coming back to it through my personal grieving process.
October 16, 2023
all the different poems featured in this book were so beautifully crafted. you can really feel the pain of each individual poet and their experiences. ive never experienced a loss but this book truly made me feel each stage of grief.
February 27, 2011
No doubt about it: these poems were hard to get through. So many tears cried while reading them but it was cathartic, in a way, to read what is in my heart, captured just so.
...I miss you every day--the heartbeat
under your necktie, the hand cupped
on the back of my neck, Old Spice
in the air, your voice delighted with stories.
--"Father" by Ted Kooser
...gone now, after the months of scanning, medication, nausea, hair loss
and weight loss;
remission, partial remission, gratitude, hope, lost hope, anxiety, anger,
confusion,
the hours and days of everyday life, something like life but only as
dying is like life;
gone the quiet at the end of dying, the mouth caught agape on its last
bite at a breath...
--"Grief" by C.K. Williams
...I'd made my stab at elegy,
the flesh made word: the very spit
in my mouth was sour with ruth
and eloquence. What could be worse?
Silence, the anthem of my father's
new country. And thus this babble,
like a dial tone, from our bodies.
-- "Men at my Father's Funeral" by William Matthews
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
--"The Mower" by Philip Larkin
...I miss you every day--the heartbeat
under your necktie, the hand cupped
on the back of my neck, Old Spice
in the air, your voice delighted with stories.
--"Father" by Ted Kooser
...gone now, after the months of scanning, medication, nausea, hair loss
and weight loss;
remission, partial remission, gratitude, hope, lost hope, anxiety, anger,
confusion,
the hours and days of everyday life, something like life but only as
dying is like life;
gone the quiet at the end of dying, the mouth caught agape on its last
bite at a breath...
--"Grief" by C.K. Williams
...I'd made my stab at elegy,
the flesh made word: the very spit
in my mouth was sour with ruth
and eloquence. What could be worse?
Silence, the anthem of my father's
new country. And thus this babble,
like a dial tone, from our bodies.
-- "Men at my Father's Funeral" by William Matthews
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
--"The Mower" by Philip Larkin
April 14, 2025
Maybe if you have faith, the first words you would think of reading when you're faced with a profound loss would be from your holy book. But if the divine mercy has already abandoned you, or if you just want to be told that it's ok not to be ok, that although this will not pass, you will find a way to adapt, you will learn to walk again, maybe limping for the rest of your life but still walking, then this book is for you.
"The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes."
-Billy Collins
"The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes."
-Billy Collins
September 26, 2010
Too many books given to a griever are full of platitudes or very bad poetry. This is the exception. It is poetry, but good poetry, and arranged from "reckoning," through "regret" and "remembrance," through other sections, and finally to "redemption." The poets include Dylan Thomas, Anne Sexton,
Ted Hughes, Emily Dickinson, and many other classic and contemporary poets. As a giever, I found it comforting in a sad way, simply seeing that someone else understood and, on top of that, had the talent to put that understanding into poetry.
Ted Hughes, Emily Dickinson, and many other classic and contemporary poets. As a giever, I found it comforting in a sad way, simply seeing that someone else understood and, on top of that, had the talent to put that understanding into poetry.
January 2, 2020
I didn't love the last section, but overall it's a really good anthology.
"When grief comes to you like a purple gorilla,
you must count yourself lucky.
You must offer her what's left
of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish
you must put aside
and make her a place at the foot of your bed,
her eyes moving from the clock
to the television and back again."
Matthew Dickman
"When grief comes to you like a purple gorilla,
you must count yourself lucky.
You must offer her what's left
of your dinner, the book you were trying to finish
you must put aside
and make her a place at the foot of your bed,
her eyes moving from the clock
to the television and back again."
Matthew Dickman
May 19, 2025
Excellent collect of poetry on grief and healing, and it was just as good the second and third, and perhaps fourth time I've read through it.
June 27, 2019
A decent collection of poems about loss and grief. As others have noted, it starts out promisingly but doesn't quite follow through.
I also found the title a bit of an odd nod to Elizabeth's Bishop's One Art, which is not about grief (although it is about loss) and famously opens with 'the art of losing isn't hard to master'; as someone who lost their father over a decade ago, if there's an art to losing, it's not one I've mastered yet.
No collection can be comprehensive, but there were quite a few of my favourites missing. Given the subjective nature of a collection such as this, that's hardly surprising - nor an indictment. But, in the interests of taking any opportunity to share poetry - here are the two shortest of them:
'Separation'
W.S. Merwin
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
'Michiko Dead'
Jack Gilbert
He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm that is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.
I also found the title a bit of an odd nod to Elizabeth's Bishop's One Art, which is not about grief (although it is about loss) and famously opens with 'the art of losing isn't hard to master'; as someone who lost their father over a decade ago, if there's an art to losing, it's not one I've mastered yet.
No collection can be comprehensive, but there were quite a few of my favourites missing. Given the subjective nature of a collection such as this, that's hardly surprising - nor an indictment. But, in the interests of taking any opportunity to share poetry - here are the two shortest of them:
'Separation'
W.S. Merwin
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
'Michiko Dead'
Jack Gilbert
He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm that is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.
September 22, 2021
If you like classic poetry and Brit lit, this might be a good collection to check out. However, I'm extremely disappointed not just in the diversity of authors in this collection, but in even type of poems included. Overall, I think this collection is for people who maybe prefer a blander form of poetry, but I wasn't impressed with very many poems or stylistic choices throughout the collection.
June 19, 2022
I am so grateful I found this book at a used bookstore several months ago. I couldn’t have known what a solace it would provide when my mom died unexpectedly last month. She was a poet and the last several years, many of our conversations centered around poetry and the power it has to capture a reflection of liminal moments. I am grateful to this book for providing me a mooring stone.
February 3, 2025
"𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒍, 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒈𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒇: 𝒘𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐𝒐 𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒍𝒚, 𝒕𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐𝒐 𝒒𝒖𝒊𝒄𝒌𝒍𝒚, 𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒅, 𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒕, 𝒂𝒃𝒓𝒖𝒑𝒕,
𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒘𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈; 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒈𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒇 𝒊𝒔, 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒏 𝒆𝒏𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉?
𝑰 𝒈𝒐 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒊𝒓𝒓𝒐𝒓: 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒐 𝒎𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒐𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒇𝒆𝒍𝒕 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒎𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒚 𝒓𝒆𝒈𝒂𝒓𝒅𝒔 𝒎𝒆,
𝒆𝒚𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒎𝒐𝒖𝒕𝒉 𝒔𝒂𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒓𝒆𝒇𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅,"
𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒘𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈; 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒈𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒇 𝒊𝒔, 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒏 𝒆𝒏𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉?
𝑰 𝒈𝒐 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒊𝒓𝒓𝒐𝒓: 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒐 𝒎𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒐𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒇𝒆𝒍𝒕 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒎𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒚 𝒓𝒆𝒈𝒂𝒓𝒅𝒔 𝒎𝒆,
𝒆𝒚𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒎𝒐𝒖𝒕𝒉 𝒔𝒂𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈, 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒓𝒆𝒇𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅,"
May 24, 2021
Poetry can give voice to feelings of grief that are difficult or impossible for us to express on our own. Although poetry is personal, this collection is bound to have something that could strike a chord for anyone. I was a bit puzzled, however, by some of the choices or omissions. For instance, Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" (a classic) is there, but her poem "Heavy" (one that I consider to be the best poem about grief) is not included. Still others have only a tangential link to loss. Despite this, it's well worth a look to find the pearls that could strike a chord for you. Actual rating: 3.5
June 28, 2023
Kevin Young is a brilliant, deeply thoughtful writer and anthology editor. I want to revel in everything he puts his name to.
Unsurprisingly, my favorite poem was "Litany" by Aracelis Girmay. Her words are always exactly what I need.
Unsurprisingly, my favorite poem was "Litany" by Aracelis Girmay. Her words are always exactly what I need.
August 21, 2019
I love a sad poem, but probably would have enjoyed this more if I had my own copy. Reading this many sad poems all at once so I could get it back to the library - it was too much :(
December 23, 2022
Nice variety and selection of poems and poets. I found some real gems in here that I wouldn’t have otherwise.
May 8, 2023
Eens in de zoveel tijd treed ik van mijn coole imago af en transformeer ik tot de ultieme boekennerd door poëzie te lezen. Waarom? Denk dat deze quote dat wel goed beschrijft:
"And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see- it is, rather, a light by which we may see- and what we see is life"
~ Robert Penn Warren
"And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see- it is, rather, a light by which we may see- and what we see is life"
~ Robert Penn Warren
December 14, 2019
"... one emerges from grief not just with emptiness, but wisdom-though of a kind you'd gladly unlearn for your loved one to return."
I started reading the book earlier this year while I was still grieving the loss of a loved one. It was cathartic but quite overwhelming. In some ways, reading makes one relive some of the trauma, they'd already thought they'd healed from.
I couldn't finish the book. Only with a healed mind and heart, could I read it again, and savor the words with less pain, but more wisdom and courage.
Death is a difficult subject to talk and write about. Kevin says, "...often in death, everything fails." And yet the language and love helps us survive.
The editor had fulfilled a huge responsibility, in making this available to all the grieving hearts. I was just glad to find it. The selection of elegies in this anthology is remarkable and you'd feel a wave of emotions while experiencing the collective experience of the poets.
"Poetry is born of necessity," writes Kevin. I'm most certain it is especially true for poetry revolving around death.
The book deals with 6 stages of the process of surviving grief— Reckoning, Regret, Remembrance, Ritual, Recovery and Redemption.
I found a lot of comfort from just reading the Introduction, wherein he says his father was killed in an accident, and he'd hope his father will visit him in a dream. He best describes his feelings with Natasha Trethewey's poem "Myth," and that, dreams often stir more pain. I've known that to be true but then, it was the only time where one felt awakened to the feeling of being with them, in the spiritual.
My experience was partly similar to Kevin, in so far I lost my grandfather in a fatal hit and run accident, and partly similar to what Natasha describes — "I was asleep while you were dying."
"Myth"
I was asleep while you were dying.
It's as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow
I make between my slumber and my waking,
the Ere bus I keep you in, still trying
not to let go. You'll be dead again tomorrow,
but in dreams you live. So I try taking
you back into morning. Sleep-heavy, turning,
my eyes open, I find you do not follow.
Again and again, this constant forsaking.
I would read death poetry in bits and pieces, before I even found this collection. The other two poems, not part of this collection, that stayed with me were : After A Death by Roo Borson and When You Meet Someone Deep In Grief by Patricia McKernon Runkle.
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