Showing titles in Death, Grief & Loss

This is a small book for the small hours when we sit alone in the dark or feel as though our grief isolates us. In the months following her husband’s sudden death, Sally Rosenthal explored her reactions to loss and came to realize that strength is a synergetic wisdom woven from the love passed on through the examples of relatives and beloved animals. In poems and prose, she shares what she has learned about survival and resilience. Come sit with Sally at her kitchen table and share the journey.

Cancerwords is a record of Glenn Peirson’s three-year battle with a rare sinus cancer. Diagnosed at stage 4, Glenn did his elegant utmost to stay here for his wife and children, the joys of his life. As mother of this remarkable man for all seasons, I was seized by a need to write poetry and take photos on my prayer-walks. These media became my prayer forms. For me, they reached through the madness to a silence where pain is transformed into resilience. I was sustained and enabled to be what Glenn, Mary, Theodora, and Henry needed me to be.

Linda Gregerson’s long-awaited new collection is a tour de force, a compendium of lives touched by the radical fragility of the planet and, ultimately, the endless astonishment and paradox of being human within the larger ecosystem, “in a world where every breath I take is luck.”

So I’m stepping back from the girl who thinks of myself as meek and incapable or crazy and a quitter. I need to remember all of the power it took to start all of the things I have started. I need to remember the person who finds herself lost in the woods and finds her legs under her and walks barefoot for her own survival.

As my spirit and soul become corporeal, my heart becomes vulnerable to you. Take, eat, and drink it. Nourish your mind with words of encouragement, empowerment, love, and even grief. Take a moment to sip from the chalice of life and open your eyes to the untold journey ahead. Know that each phase of life comes with its own heaven and hell. I offer you the naked truth: that as humans, most times, we refuse to share, for fear of being ridiculed or taken advantage of. But on this day that my spoken words are made tangible, may they be a beacon to light your own path.

Inside each of us is a deep struggle, one that some embrace, and others ignore. This collection of deeply moving poems gives you a glimpse into the darkest place your mind can take you and shows the true struggle within one's own mind. Through pain and sorrow, this award-winning author connects her soul to yours in a beautiful melody of words that will leave you with a deeper insight than most are prepared for.

Outshine Your Pain is a book that brings hope to hearts recovering from emotional trauma. Poetry helps us heal these wounds, reassess the pain, accept it, observe it, and live with it for a bit without judging it. This approach is a form of art therapy, which will help in the healing process. This form of art therapy will aid in the recovery of emotional pain. It will lead the listener on a quest to discover the unknown within.

The Exorcism is a book addressing the causes of my feelings of being unwanted. We all have our battles and I needed to clear my conscience which has led me to writing The Exorcism. Mental health is a big part of my life and this world, so I feel like it is very important that we address and solve the problems we have so we don’t continue to lose our friends/ family members to suicide. Depression, anxiety, etc., are illnesses that are downplayed and it’s long overdue for it to be taken seriously.

The author’s personal journey of transformation following her son Blaise’s suicide. The book traces her path from grief to understanding and healing, shown through a collection of 21 fables and poems she wrote to Blaise in the year after his untimely death. This audiobook explores Laura’s message that it is in your power to overcome personal difficulties, no matter what, by creating something beautiful in the wake of whatever has befallen you. The terrible times you suffer are not the end of life, but can become a new beginning.

Write Out Your Drops is an eclectic poetry collection speaking on an array of themes as it pertains to being true to oneself. The author brings listeners on an expressive journey through lyrical verses and graceful symbolism that makes one's individual experience seem more understood through the collective. The collection speaks on fighting despite the rain, embracing your tears through the struggles you face, and remaining in tune to the melody of your heart and the blood to which you are rooted.

Naomi Shihab Nye has spent thirty-five years traveling the world to lead writing workshops and inspire students of all ages. In her newest collection Transfer she draws on her Palestinian American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her extensive travel experiences to create a poetry collection that attests to our shared humanity.

This poem consists of 11 stanzas of varying length, the first four of which were composed in 1802. These deal with the subject of death, a concept with which Wordsworth confesses to having struggled within childhood.

Countee Cullen was already a prominent literary figure when he published Color, his auspicious debut collection of poetry. In deceptively simple verse, and in harmony with lyric tradition rather than rebellion against it, Cullen covered such complex terrain as race, faith, mortality, sexuality, and identity. Cullen may be less well known today than his contemporaries, but his emotional candor, creative ambition, and impudent humor retain an unforgettable spark.

“I will consider a slice of pizza," opens Phillips's poem "Jubilate Civitas." "For rare among pleasures in Gotham, it is both / exquisite and blessedly cheap." Thus, as throughout this collection, he celebrates a simple pleasure that "in a time of deceit . . . is honest and upright, steadfast and good"; even the busted buttons we press when waiting to cross the street make for elegy in a collection that brings us this poet at his burnished best.

Many times, we are bombarded by situations that make it difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel…we become impeded by our struggles and confined to futile reactions. And so…these poems come from an authentic place…a space where one is able to make sense of those things that make no sense. These poems are moments of contemplation in a world of troubles and trauma…These poems are a process of embracing a change to avoid remaining the same.

I am open; these words are my sutures. Shades is an attempt to reconcile who I am as a man, with a society that seems to be fluctuating and struggling at every turn. I show my encounters with family, religion, queerness, heartbreak, COVID-19, and politics. This is a look at my life in 2021, shown through poetry.

Writing Poems in the Sunlight is a collection of contemporary poems by Clifton King, an award winning Southern California poet. His poetry is direct, accessible, and suffused with imagery. His poems speak of love, death, the local beach, and everything in life that catches his eye.

Jessica’s poems were written as a direct response to the sudden death of her husband four weeks before she was ordained priest in the Church of England, and many reflect her faith. These honest poems chart her journey from the first unbelieving days through anger, pain, withdrawal, survival, and eventual acceptance, and even joy. These poems show those who are grieving that they are not alone, and that there is hope for love, life, and laughter once again.

This full collection of 56 poems reflecting on the concept of self, loss, fragility, and the constructs we must create in order to face the transient nature of life was named a finalist in the National Poetry Series, The New Issues Poetry Prize, The Four Way Books Intro Prize, and others.

The poems of Dear October chronicle the evolution of the natural world and a daughter caring for her mother during the last year of her life. Months of the final year act as the scaffolding for the collection as they reflect on the 12 moons. The spirit of home, family, and mother-daughter relationship intertwine with the diversity of culture and ecology in Northern New Mexico.