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Mourning Songs: Poems of Sorrow and Beauty
A beautiful, compact, gift edition of some of the world’s greatest poems about loss and death, to ease the heart of the bereaved Who has not suffered grief? In Mourning Songs , the brilliant poet and editor Grace Schulman has gathered together the most moving poems about sorrow by the likes of Elizabeth Bishop, William Carlos Williams, Gwendolyn Brooks, Neruda, Catullus, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, W. S. Merwin, Lorca, Denise Levertov, Keats, Hart Crane, Michael Palmer, Robert Frost, Hopkins, Hardy, Bei Dao, and Czeslaw Milosz―to name only some of the masters in this slim volume.
“The poems in this collection,” as Schulman notes in her introduction, “sing of grief as they praise life.” She notes, “As any bereaved survivor knows, there is no consolation. ‘Time doesn’t heal grief; it emphasizes it,’ wrote Marianne Moore. The loss of a loved one never leaves us. We don’t want it to. In grief, one remembers the beloved. But running beside it, parallel to it, is the joy of existence, the love that causes pain of loss, the loss that enlarges us with the wonder of existence.”
“The poems in this collection,” as Schulman notes in her introduction, “sing of grief as they praise life.” She notes, “As any bereaved survivor knows, there is no consolation. ‘Time doesn’t heal grief; it emphasizes it,’ wrote Marianne Moore. The loss of a loved one never leaves us. We don’t want it to. In grief, one remembers the beloved. But running beside it, parallel to it, is the joy of existence, the love that causes pain of loss, the loss that enlarges us with the wonder of existence.”
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
Published May 28, 2019
10 people are currently reading
81 people want to read
About the author
Grace Schulman
34 books6 followersGRACE SCHULMAN is the author many acclaimed books of poetry, including Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. For her poetry she has received a Guggenheim fellowship, the Aiken-Taylor Award, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, New York University’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and three Pushcart prizes. Schulman is a distinguished professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY. She is a former director of the Poetry Center (1978–1984) and a former poetry editor of The Nation (1971–2006).
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 5, 2020
This book was complicated because there were pages that I really enjoyed reading but I had to be in a special mindset, otherwise, everything felt flat.
Some were just psalms from the Bible, and others did not make sense. The ones that worked were really good and the ones that did not were really bad. Some poems were really lazy and others were really creative. There was no in-between and that made it too ordinary.
Basically there was nothing special about this book.
Some were just psalms from the Bible, and others did not make sense. The ones that worked were really good and the ones that did not were really bad. Some poems were really lazy and others were really creative. There was no in-between and that made it too ordinary.
Basically there was nothing special about this book.
March 3, 2022
3.5
Unequal anthology but enjoyable as a whole. Famous poems and poets as well as some pleasant surprises make it a cute, pocket-sized poetry anthology, which can help through tough times.
As for its composition, there are some beautiful yet not very known poems from famous poets (Thomas Hardy, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, John Keats...), as well as famously beautiful ones ('Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night' by Dylan Thomas for example).
It is mixed with poems translated into English from lesser known authors, a passage from Faust, and poems with religious tones (it even features a Psalm - which can divide readers). Those poems were the ones I appreciated the least.
As a whole, the rest makes it still worth reading - perhaps not worth purchasing new. The anthology is quite short and small, yet it cost me 13€ for around 60 poems divided in 7 sections on 143 pages. It makes for a cute bedtime book or to carry and travel with in needed times.
Unequal anthology but enjoyable as a whole. Famous poems and poets as well as some pleasant surprises make it a cute, pocket-sized poetry anthology, which can help through tough times.
As for its composition, there are some beautiful yet not very known poems from famous poets (Thomas Hardy, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, John Keats...), as well as famously beautiful ones ('Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night' by Dylan Thomas for example).
It is mixed with poems translated into English from lesser known authors, a passage from Faust, and poems with religious tones (it even features a Psalm - which can divide readers). Those poems were the ones I appreciated the least.
As a whole, the rest makes it still worth reading - perhaps not worth purchasing new. The anthology is quite short and small, yet it cost me 13€ for around 60 poems divided in 7 sections on 143 pages. It makes for a cute bedtime book or to carry and travel with in needed times.
July 30, 2021
A mix of poems around the central themes of grief and loss. As with most anthologies, strong entries are offset by weak ones, resulting in a collection that is at times moving but overall pretty average.
September 21, 2025
Another anthology of poetry picked off the library shelves that I've been reading for quite awhile. Overall the quality in this volume is excellent.
Each chapter explores aspects of sorrow and death from different points of view. I liked especially "For the Beloved" and "Talking to Grief".
Kevin Young's "Redemption Song" was a standout: "what's worse, the forgetting/or the thing/you can't forget"
as well as the two Denise Levertov selections, "September 1961": "...we count the/words in our pockets, we wonder/how it will be without them"
and "What Were They Like", which needs to be read in its entirety, not quoted from.
Other favorites included WS Merwin's "Rain Light", H.D.'s "Never More Will the Wind", Elizabeth Bishop's "Sestina", Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Rites for Cousin Vit" and Csezlaw Milosz's "Campo dei Fiori".
A varied and moving collection.
Each chapter explores aspects of sorrow and death from different points of view. I liked especially "For the Beloved" and "Talking to Grief".
Kevin Young's "Redemption Song" was a standout: "what's worse, the forgetting/or the thing/you can't forget"
as well as the two Denise Levertov selections, "September 1961": "...we count the/words in our pockets, we wonder/how it will be without them"
and "What Were They Like", which needs to be read in its entirety, not quoted from.
Other favorites included WS Merwin's "Rain Light", H.D.'s "Never More Will the Wind", Elizabeth Bishop's "Sestina", Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Rites for Cousin Vit" and Csezlaw Milosz's "Campo dei Fiori".
A varied and moving collection.
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December 23, 2022While these poems are not all what we might think of as nature poems or ecopoems, several of the pieces collected here do take their cues from the greater than human world. As we enter a period of mourning— for the human losses suffered since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, for the state of the planet around us, and for so much more— it may be helpful to have poems to turn to that put words to grief. This pocket-sized collection offers many gems. Look for poems by William Carols Williams, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ezra Pound, H.D. James Laughlin, May Swenson, and Bei Dao.
Review published originally with Orion Magazine:https://orionmagazine.org/2021/08/ele...
Review published originally with Orion Magazine:https://orionmagazine.org/2021/08/ele...
November 16, 2020
Poems, sad ones and others that don’t make sense. My favourite 👌🏼
July 26, 2022
I was hoping for more of the beauty but felt it was lopsided focusing more on death and the end. Which are quite interesting but not so much my original reason for purchase.
May 5, 2024
saddest collection of poems ive ever read. i cried a lot. not much to say but its beautiful.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews