Grief Poetry

With work that ranges from the laugh-out-loud funny to the silence and rage of loss, Forgive Yourself These Tiny Acts of Self-Destruction is a must read. This is a collection of work that asks itself for forgiveness while becoming an instruction manual on how listeners can follow suit. These complex and passionate poems make space for a narrative about the self in the wake of destruction. It explores American culture and examines how Singer's identity as a Jewish American underpins daily life.

"Annabel Lee" is the last complete poem by Edgar Allan Poe. Like many of Poe's poems, it explores the theme of the death of a beautiful woman. The narrator, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are jealous. He retains his love for her even after her death.

Drawing from his experience as a translator, Forrest Gander includes, in the first powerfully elegiac section, a version of a poem by the Spanish mystical poet St. John of the Cross. He continues with a long multilingual poem examining the syncretic geological and cultural history of the US border with Mexico. The poems of the third section - a moving transcription of Gander’s efforts to address his mother dying of Alzheimer’s - rise like hymns, transforming slowly from reverence to revelation.

Instagram superstar and poet Nikita Gill shares a collection of poems crafted as the world went into lockdown, tackling themes such as mental health and loneliness, and the precarity of hope. Through the life cycle of a star, she invites the listener to feel connected to the universe, taking us on a journey through the five stages of grief to the five stages of hope.

In 2013, Neil Hilborn's performance of his poem "OCD" went viral. To date, it has been watched over 100 million times. Our Numbered Days is Neil’s debut full-length poetry collection, containing 45 of Neil's poems including "OCD", "Joey", "Future Tense", "Liminality", "Moving Day", and many, many never-before-seen poems.

Snow in the Graveyard blankets the ground, a haunting cold but silent sound, it can feel scary but Ancestors are all around, peace and love can be found

If you've ever experienced heartbreak, Diana Townsend's I Thought I Missed Him is a poetry collection you won't want to miss. With brutal honesty and unflinching emotion, Townsend delves into the toxic and often destructive emotions that arise when a relationship comes to an end. But this isn't just a collection of poems about pain and heartache. I Thought I Missed Him is a journey of self-discovery and self-reflection, as Townsend grapples with the complexities of moving on from someone she once loved. In these pages, you'll find moments of clarity and vulnerability, as well as a rawness ...

Lamentations of the Heart soulfully combines contemporary free verse poetry and nonfictional prose to tell the story of one mother’s grief following the death of her only child. The author interweaves scriptural passages with the inevitable struggles to accept and make sense of her new reality. All of it reveals the unending love for family that remains. Written to reach out to others who have experienced similar pain, it moves upon the uneven, wavering pattern of great emotion, along a tumultuous path blessed with signs and wonders — an unwanted journey a tapestry of life healing ...

Butcher is a book about love & loss—about being unapologetic and transparent in grief. Natasha finds an unexpected solace in the kitchen after losing her best friend and brother, Marcus. Here, using the cuts of the cow as a metaphor Miller explores addiction, family & tragedy.

As Our Souls Foretold is an evocative collection that transcends time, identity, and human experience, guiding listeners into the hidden currents of the mind and soul. Each verse flows like a wave—sometimes gentle and calm, other times intense and transformative—carrying listeners through the ebb and flow of subconscious thoughts and emotions. Themes of love, loss, transformation, and resilience weave throughout the collection, offering a poetic journey that invites reflection and self-discovery.

In her electric fourth collection, Melissa Broder penetrates the itch of existence and explores numberless deaths: the annihilation of self, the bereavement of love, the destruction of fantasy, the transmutation, even, of our ideas of dying. What emerges is an infinite series of false endings - each a trap door containing the possibility for alchemy, rebirth, and renewal. Last Sext confronts both eternal longing and the mystery of mortality, with language hot, primal, and dark.

The witch: supernaturally powerful, inscrutably independent, and now - indestructible. These moving, relatable poems encourage resilience and embolden women to take control of their own stories. Enemies try to judge, oppress, and marginalize her, but the witch doesn't burn in this one.

Over four decades, Carolyn Forché's visionary work has reinvigorated poetry's power to awaken the reader. Her groundbreaking poems have been testimonies, inquiries, and wonderments. They daringly map a territory where poetry asserts our inexhaustible responsibility to each other. Her first new collection in 17 years, In the Lateness of the World is a tenebrous book of crossings, of migrations across oceans and borders but also between the present and the past, life and death.

A new volume of poetry from Robert Hass is always an event. In Summer Snow, Hass further affirms his position as one of our most highly regarded living poets. Hass’s trademark careful attention to the natural world, his subtle humor, and the delicate but wide-ranging eye he casts on the human experience are fully on display in his masterful collection. Touching on subjects including the poignancy of loss, the serene and resonant beauty of nature, and the mutability of desire, Hass exhibits his virtuosic abilities and expansive intellect, and tremendous listenability.

Heartbreak and grief touch every soul at least once in a lifetime, and Ranata Suzuki translates those raw emotions into words. The Longest Night combines strikingly poignant quotations, powerfully emotive poetry, and captivating silhouette imagery to form a mournful lover's journal that explores a side of love that is deep, dark, and hauntingly beautiful.

This bestseller and many award winning autobiographical debut poetry collection plunges into modern times, regrets, depression, and suicidal thoughts.

Courage is a common hope that we can cultivate together. These prayers and poems can be listened to in group settings—among friends, families, and worshipping communities—and are also ideal for personal reflection.

What if grief could become a wild invitation into a practice of radical open-heartedness and intimacy with the world and all of life? That is the question bestselling author and licensed psychotherapist, Annalise Oatman, explores in this collection of poetic diary entries. Unpretentious and characteristically confessional, this collection continually finds the universal within the personal, and finds that the essence of eroticism is a tender reaching towards all that is "outside" oneself.

I recorded this the day after we lost one of our beloved pets. Rainbow Bridge is the theme of several works of poetry written in the 1980s and 1990s that speak of an other-worldly place where pets go upon death, eventually to be reunited with their owners. It brings a lump to my throat, and often a tear to my eye but also comfort as I recall good times with Pongo.

T.S. Eliot was a towering figure in 20th-century literature, a renowned poet, playwright, and critic whose work - including "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), The Waste Land (1922), Four Quartets (1943), and Murder in the Cathedral (1935) - continues to be among the most-read and influential in the canon of American literature. The Essential T.S. Eliot collects Eliot’s most lasting and important poetry in one career-spanning audiobook, with an introduction from Vijay Seshadri, one of our foremost poets.