Poetry - Subjects & Themes - Death, Grief, Loss

With desperate longing and raw vulnerability--but also surprising humor--Molly Johnsen's debut collection confronts trauma and disability like long-lost relatives. Johnsen relies on the power and shortcomings of language to highlight the ways "we are manhandled by mortality." From a therapist's office, to a cave...

These pieces follow the chronological order of the journal I kept throughout my battle with cancer -from the day of diagnosis on January 5, 2024 to reaching that same day a year later, with no evidence of disease.They were written based on the ever-changing...

The title of David Whyte's fifth volume of poetry is an apt description of its contents. Everything, he points out, is indeed waiting for us, including our own demise and the demise of those we love. In less eloquent hands, this wisdom might feel...

Revered by the likes of Octavio Paz and Roberto Bolaño, Alejandra Pizarnik is still a hidden treasure in the U.S. Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962-1972 comprises all of her middle to late work, as well as a selection of posthumously published verse....

"A blazing display of bravura and bravado . . . each of [Tu's] utterances [is] a lesson in runic risk." -ko ko thett, poet and translatorSelected by Ng Yi-Sheng as the winner of the 2024 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize.Born out of a myriad...

Peter Gizzi's powerful new collection reminds us that the elegy is lament but also--as it has been for centuries--a work of loveWinner of the T.S. Eliot Prize Winner of the Massachusetts Book AwardPeter Gizzi has said that "the elegy is a mode that can...

Preeti Vangani's Fifty Mothers weaves narrative and elegy around the figure of a mother, the poems unfolding in the speaker's Bombay home. Pierced with joy, with music and sweat, traffic and smoke, the collection layers family dynamics, gender roles, and the pain and pleasure...

Fresh, beautiful new translations of one of the most important poets of all time, publishing in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Rainer Maria Rilke's birth. Rilke is one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, revered throughout the world. Geoffrey Lehmann has...

"Fire to Fire should solidify Doty's position as a star of contemporary American poetry. . . . The poems combine close attention to the fragile, contingent things of the world with the constant, almost unavoidable chance of transcendence." -- Publishers WeeklyA landmark collection of...

"Banhart approaches somber themes with whimsy... his work expounds on a crucial tenet of queerness: liberation in lightness and in unabashed optimism. Funny and enduringly weird. " --PITCHFORKLike Devendra Banhart's music and visual art, his poetry appears at the convergence of humor and sorrow,...

Studded with moments of surprise, wit, and intellectual delight, this light-footed, piercing memoir of grief tracks reverberations of loss and acceptance across a lifetime.When Erin Vincent was fourteen years old, both of her parents were killed in a traffic accident. Almost forty years later,...

Freely Frayed gathers early poems, recent essays, and translation notes by National Book Award winning poet Don Mee Choi. Featuring Choi's radical modes of writing back to empire, the collection offers both the underpinnings of her acclaimed KOR-US trilogy (Hardly War, DMZ Colony, and...

Grief will kill you if you let it.Grief is a universal experience that touches us all at some point in life.In this powerful collection of poetry, Charmaine takes you through the many phases of grief, expressing the emotions that often feel impossible to put...

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOEMI PRESS BOOK AWARD IN POETRYGIRL WORK, a book-length meditation on sexual violence and feminized labor, centers hybrid-form and prose poems exploring haunting, labor, sexual trauma, and the assertion of a gender- nonconforming self in our current political moment. Written...

"Hirshfield's are the kind of poems that could--before you even realize it--have quietly changed your life."--O MagazineIn this luminous and authoritative collection, Jane Hirshfield presents an ever-deepening and altering comprehension of human existence in poems utterly unique, as William Matthews once wrote of her...

A stunning debut collection, Anthony Ceballos' Glassful of Prayer, wrestles with questions of identity against the backdrop of loss, heritage, family ties, addiction, nature, and urban Minneapolis. Ceballos relentlessly delves into the experience of claiming and defining a self with vivid imagery of reflections...

"Brianna Pastor is by far one of my favorite new writers. Good Grief is a powerful testament that shows how hard the past can be and that overcoming it is possible. If you want to feel seen and deeply moved, read Good Grief. Brianna...

Now in paperback. Euripides, the last of the three great tragedians of ancient Athens, reached the height of his renown during the disastrous Peloponnesian War, when democratic Athens was brought down by its own outsized ambitions. "Euripides," the classicist Bernard Knox has written, "was...

This book is a tribute to all caregivers, whose dedication often goes unrecognized. It offers comfort and understanding to anyone who has cared for someone with dementia, or anyone who has witnessed the slow unraveling of memory. It should be obligatory reading for all...

With over 75,000 copies sold, best - selling author and poet Jennae Cecelia brings you the updated and expanded version of her poetry book, Healing For No One But Me. In a world that has felt uncertain, heavy, and loud, this is a poetry...