Grief Poetry

The women in Allison Adair’s debut collection—luminous and electric from the first line to the last—live in places that have been excavated for gold and precious ores. They understand the nature of being hollowed out, of being “the planet’s stone / core as it tries to carve out one secret place and fails.” And so, as these poems take us from the midst of the Civil War to our current era, they chart fairy tales that are at once unsettling and painfully familiar, never forgetting that cruelty compels us to search for tenderness.

Innermost is a collection of both free-verse and fixed-verse poetry written over a period of half a decade about every emotion felt inside the human heart. These poems will transport you to a whole other world within the innermost depths of the human soul.

Juan Felipe Herrera, the first Latino Poet Laureate of the United States and son of Mexican immigrants, grew up in the migrant fields of California. Exuberant and socially engaged, reflective and healing, this collection of new work from the nation's first Latino Poet Laureate is brimming with the wide-open vision and hard-won wisdom of a poet whose life and creative arc have spanned chasms of culture in an endless crossing, dreaming and back again.

So very rarely is a book of poetry so engaging that it, upon release, immediately becomes essential listening. The emotional rollercoaster that is Damaged, written by Jimmy Broccoli, whips you around on unstable rails, transporting you to a poetic wonderland that challenges the traditional while embracing the unexplored. It’s multicolored, neon graffiti on darkened walls in dimly lit rooms. It’s hesitant confessions gently leaving the lips of the accused. It’s the unexpected invitation to the dance. Damaged is exposed and vulnerable verse that whispers in bold type.

From the bestselling author of Pillow Thoughts and Watering the Soul comes another deeply honest and moving collection of poetry and prose that explores the strength and resilience we embody in the face of hardship and change. Presented in six captivating sections—Reflecting, Repairing, Change, Awakening, Emerging, and Rebirth—Time Will Tell tells the story of a curious, lost soul who crashed down to Earth on the search for purpose.

Fairies and Fusiliers is a collection of 47 short poems and was dedicated to Graves' former regiment, the Royal Fusiliers.

Wraith Like Me is the journey of a woman from childhood through her mid-30s. These strange poems chronicle her experiences with trauma, abuse, anxiety, and a bottomless rage. The words begin the trails of healing, hope, and self-acceptance (a story that will continue in future poetry collections).

In Trace Evidence, the urgent follow-up to his award-winning debut Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing, Charif Shanahan continues his piercing meditations on the intricacies of mixed-race identity, queer desire, time, mortality, and the legacies of anti-Blackness in the US and abroad. With rich lyricism, power, and tenderness, Trace Evidence centers the racial periphery and excavates the vestiges of our violent colonial past in the most intimate aspects of our lives.

A parent's worst nightmare is to receive the news that their child is gone. The grief that follows is overwhelming. Through her love of poetry, Wanda Weathersby shares her journey of grief after the death of her precious son Calvin. Her journey shows the power of celebrating the memories and the importance of a strong support system to help through these difficult times. If you have lost a child or a loved one, experience the healing and love that God poured out for this mom during these difficult times and be inspired to find your own path of healing with him.

From NPR correspondent and New York Times bestselling author, Kwame Alexander, comes a powerful and provocative collection of poems that cut to the heart of the entrenched racism and oppression in America and eloquently explores ongoing events.

Pain and trauma are what makes us human, arguably unifying us as a species. Finding our way out can be traumatic itself at the best of times, always confusing and so often riddled with false starts and mistakes. Through poetry, this collection will make you cry, laugh, empathize, question, and eventually help you find your way through and out of that dark place. From someone who has experienced the journey, and put in the years of study and work required to build a tool set to make the needed progress toward better mental health—the time is right to share this work with the world.

Divided into three parts—Body, Mind, and Soul—Brianna Pastor’s intimate collection of poems invites us inside a highly sensitive mind and explores what it’s like to discover neurodivergence in adulthood and view life through an empathetic lens. Hopefully, by deepening our understanding of sensitivity and how it affects others, we can move one step closer to a more connected, healed world.

Writing with diverse poetic forms and using original artwork to deepen the exploration of conflict, Jo Patti presents us with a dynamic and edgy second book of poetry. Not for the faint hearted. This volume of poetry includes poems which express experiences where conflict has occurred. Conflict may arise from misunderstanding, historical grievances, struggles over control, power and money. Conflict may be borne out of righteous resistance.

This is the story of a dark night of the soul, of traversing the depths of despair, and of rebirth. It shows the reality of hitting rock bottom. Not by a self-reported narrative written after the fact, but through unfiltered poetic expression written in real time during breakdown and recovery. The poems within this collection were written over a 24-month period and are presented in chronological order. They show the inner tumult and turmoil of a man desperately trying, and failing, to hold together the crumbling status quo of his prior existence.

Returning with her newest poetry book, beloved poet Courtney Peppernell combines storytelling, poetry, and prose in a uniquely inspirational way. Filled with heartfelt anecdotes and insightful messages, The Way Back Home is a tribute to rebuilding our lives after loss. Divided into sections that draw on themes of courage, resilience, purpose, and hope, the collection has Peppernell once again walking us through a redemptive journey of the heart, mind, and soul.

Following on his exquisite Stones, Young's new collection shapes stories of familial and familiar love, inspired in part by other lives. A central sequence, “The Two-Headed Nightngale,” is spoken by Millie-Christine McCoy, the famous conjoined African American “Carolina Twins.” Born into slavery and ill treatment as a “freak” sensation in 1851 and later free women, their alto and soprano voices harmonized, and Young's poem explores their evolving selfhood and self-understanding: “As one we sang, /we spake— / She was the body / I the soul / Without one / Perishes the whole.”

My Way With Words is reamed from decades of jotted thoughts and poems. Jotted thoughts are easily understood, but jotted poems I believe in my case deserves an explanation. Many of my poems were completed beginning to end with no changes between or very little editing and that includes a few longer poems.

Asesinato. En este corto poema el autor relata en forma de diálogo un crimen que realmente ocurrió en la calle 42 de Nueva York. El relato de la violencia que este acto físico supuso le sirve al poeta para plasmar el dolor de su ánimo. Ciudad sin sueño. Intenta transmitir el poeta su propia insatisfacción por analogía con la noche, la vigilia, que no le permite dormir ni soñar ni encontrar alivio o esperanza. Navidad en el Hudson. En este poema identifica el protagonista su sensación de soledad con respecto al resto del mundo en el río Hudson.

With electrifying boldness and fearlessness of vision, Holland-Batt confronts what it means to be mortal in an astonishing and deeply humane portrait of a father’s Parkinson’s Disease, and a daughter forged by grief. Opening and closing with startling elegies set in the charged moments before and after a death, and fearlessly probing the body’s animal endurance, appetites and metamorphoses, The Jaguar is marked by Holland-Batt’s lyric intensity and linguistic mastery, along with a stark new clarity of voice.

"Annabel Lee" tells the story of young love cut short by tragedy. As the speaker (often assumed to be based on Poe himself, whose young wife died shortly before he wrote this poem) discusses his relationship with the now-deceased Annabel Lee, he presents the love between them as pure, eternal, and all-conquering. The love between the speaker and Annabel Lee may have been short-lived, but it remains too powerful to be defeated, even by death. Through describing this intensely idealized love, the poem argues that love is the strongest force on earth.