Grief Poetry

National Book Award finalist, Iraq war veteran, novelist, and poet Kevin Powers creates a deeply affecting portrait of a life shaped by war. Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting captures the many moments that comprise a soldier's life: Driving down the Texas highway; waiting for the unknown in the dry Iraq heat; writing a love letter; listening to a mother recount her dreams. Written with evocative language and discernment, Powers' poetry strives to make sense of the war and its echoes through human experience.

These verses twist trauma and grief into self-loving peace, a therapy cushion of words and doodle artwork. Come feel the dark so we can see the light again.

Shards are the chipped-off pieces and eroded grains of myself that I collected from my mid-20s, when I was almost homeless again (yes, again), through my 30s, when I fought through that poverty, depression, and grief to find myself as a survivor. A poet doesn't just love you for a moment. She lets you puncture her skin with the way you feel, lets it heal, and then rubs it now and then to feel you again. This debut collection of poetry by a Cleveland, Ohio artist tells stories of traumas, breaking cycles, sexy romances, and the bond between the poet and listener.

I lost my wife in 2020 to a brain tumor just a few weeks after we had celebrated our 48th wedding anniversary. “Celebrated” is a word that springs back when pressed down. More subdued than earlier ones, to be sure, that last anniversary was nonetheless a felt celebration of a lifetime together.

Starting as a way to cope through the struggles of working in an underfunded system and the second hand trauma from her students, Katie Doehrmann shares her poetry in a raw and open memoir about her time working for a residential mental health facility.

In Conversation is a personal milestone in Janice Whyne's journey of rediscovering her creative self. She sees poetry as a means of self-expression. A conduit and a safe space for our emotions, feelings and lived experiences. The poems in In Conversation began their lives with a word(s) exchanged in conversation or that captured her attention in something she was listening to or viewing. She regards them as articulations of the said and unsaid, with the poetic voice in them not always hers but rather an expression or interpretation of the voice(s) of others.

I often think about our youth. It was indeed a strangely shaped toy, with a short body dragging a very long tail, spreading like wings, refusing to leave. A lamp is still on, but a song has been sung. A play has not ended, a love has reached the end of the road. We salute you. And the new curtain is about to be drawn. Maybe that's what human life is like, ending, starting, starting again, then ending. No matter what, we have to shoulder our suffering and happiness, moving forward, don't turn around.

Do you enjoy museums of oddities? Places where you’ll find the strange, the unusual, and the bizarre? In this anthology, you will encounter oddities composed by Bill Bruehl—storyteller, actor, and poet—and you’ll discover what emerges from his rich, sometimes chilling, imagination. This collection of 29 poems includes his favorites. They include love poems alongside horror, realism, fantasy, and realistic fiction. If you enjoy museums dedicated to the strange and unusual, you will enjoy listening to The Fearsome Colors of Forsythia.

Today Thomas Gray is remembered almost solely for this melancholy meditation on the inevitability of death and the insignificance of fame. The poem was originally thought to have been inspired by the death of Gray's close friend, Richard West, but modern critics think this to be unlikely. Retiring by nature, Gray did not want the elegy to be published, but his hand was forced by an unscrupulous editor who planned to publish the poem without permission. The polished elegance of the versification has ensured that the poem has retained its appeal over the centuries.

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.

Tombstones is a collection of some of the finest dark verse and horror-themed literature while exploring the various elements of dreams, erotica, and psychology and visualizing complete fear and terror...including the popular dark verse "The Fallen Angel", the powerfully erotic vampire tale "Blood Hungry", and a journey into the mind of the "Wicked Torturer".

The Snake, the Scorpion, the Sage: A Poetry Book contains 38 poems across the themes of chaos, madness, lost love, violence, shadow work, dreams, nightmares, death, and the messy side of life experience.

Love Glutton is a poetry anthology that features 75 poems on the adventurous mysteries of love, lust, life, and memory. Tadhg Culley is a professional screenwriter, published author, and poet from the UK. He has written 10 feature film screenplays, nine poetry books, eight TV series scripts, eight novellas, three guidebooks, one memoir, one novelette, one collection of short stories, and many other short-form works, delving into documentary, theater, animation, and games.

In this poetry collection "Ways to Say Goodbye", Anne Kellas takes the listener through dream sequences, abstract and imagistic poems and deeply personal poems of loss. The effect is a cumulative building of a quiet world of reflective resilience as the poet tries out possible ways to do what is almost impossible – to love and to say goodbye.

In this collection, explore a variety of poems depicting a time of loneliness, growth, and self reflection. How change can often be unwanted, and the feelings that transpire with overcoming it.

Glory, is the debut poetry release from poet, Fonzie Graziano. Developed over a span of several years, the poems in this chapbook contain themes and images that have haunted the author for much of his life until this point. Glory is a journey in the maze of an ill afflicted psyche which touches on topics close to the daily struggles of the author’s upbringing; love, depression, death, infidelity, mental illness, heartbreak, and moving forward.

Denise Riley has pursued her singular path with a determined disregard for poetic fashion: a poet of immense musical gifts and formal skill, as happy in traditional forms as experimental, her non-alignment with any ‘tribe’ has led to a rich and various poetry that, while densely allusive and intellectually uncompromising, remains emotionally open towards the reader at the most profound level. Say Something Back, her lyric meditation on bereavement, won Riley universal acclaim - and a wide and long-deserved readership.

Kayo Chingonyi's remarkable second collection follows the course of a 'blood condition' as it finds its way to deeply personal grounds. From the banks of the Zambezi river to London and Leeds, these poems speak to how distance and time, nations and history can collapse within a body. With astonishing lyricism and musicality, this is a story of multiple inheritances—of grief and survival, renewal and the painful process of letting go—and a hymn to the people and places that run in our blood.

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.

Loved, sickened loneliness feels makes a boy feel empty vulnerable, and 50 Poems was written in the lonely lakes of despair. My name is Daniel Contreras, and I suffered through loneliness and depression. Growing up, I would hide my poems, but now, it's my expression.