Good Grief

by Mikey Swanberg

"Oh (Jane) it’s no surprise / but no man ever taught me // to like the world / or to like myself in it" writes Mikey Swanberg on the 26th page of this, his book-length elegy for Jane Gentry Vance, a quiet poet from Kentucky now gone five years, who maybe you knew and maybe you didn't, and it couldn't matter less because Good Grief is also, somehow, an elegy for young love's fantasies, and for the boys we make of our men, for age and also for living itself—how readily we give up on beauty, on full feeling, on delight, how thoughtlessly we forget our mothers, our teachers, and then soon the student still breathing inside each of us, no matter how old we are or accomplished or sad or cowardly, because life is for the living and living means learning and goddamnit we don't have time to worry if that is a cliché. Good Grief is a triumph. Buy a copy for everyone who has ever taught you something and start with yourself."

- Rebecca Gayle Howell

Genres: Poetry

60 pages, Paperback

Published September 11, 2019

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Right smack in that spot between laughter and crying.
"This land is your land" has always made me uncomfortable. It is a relief to find I am not the only one. This relief happens again and again here in this book that I read in one wide-eyed breath.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief and beautiful "serial lament." Swanberg can be very funny when he wants to be but he manages to balance that humor and smoothly blend tone. Sweet but not cloying.