Grief Poetry

A breathtaking collection of love poems from one of our great contemporary poets - stunning odes of obsession, loss, and the desire for a renewed self.

Brooks Haxton has been writing for years about the connections between human beings and the creatures we find fascinating. Mister Toebones, his new collection, draws its title from a nickname Haxton gives to a daddy longlegs he sees at his father's grave. In another poem, the poet and his mother, in search of a swimming hole, find a copperhead rearing to strike, about to birth its live young. Elsewhere, waist-deep in the Mississippi River, under the Atlantic Ocean, on the cracked ice of a frozen pond, even in outer space, the poet explores forces that seem past endurance.

The first selection of poems by renowned Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian to appear in English, this collection is a captivating, disorienting descent into the trauma of loss and its aftermath. In spare lines, Abdolmalekian conjures surreal, cinematic images that pan wide as deftly as they narrow into intimate focus. Time is a thread come unspooled: Pain arrives before the wound, and the dead wait for sunrise.

Dive into Ink of Tears, where every poem is a journey through the complexities of the human broken heart. How do we navigate the highs and lows of love and loss? What makes us resilient in the face of heartache? How does love elevate us, and how does heartbreak shape us? For all who have loved deeply and got hurt, share a timeless journey with collections of poems that will touch and break your heart at the same time.

Within Trigger Warning lies a poetic memoir of writings and art from my journey living through a life afflicted by mental illness. Step into my mind to hear nearly 17 years of experiences and triggers. Enter at your own risk.

From the author of Bastards comes Scarcity, the new collection of poetry. Bleak, philosophical, and with an often surgical precision, it is a journey through emptiness, environmental collapse, and poverty that is at the same time rich with humanity, raw emotion, and hope.

Through its 211 interwoven poems, this double-tiered recursive crown of sonnets takes the listener on an epic journey to the heart of mankind’s would-be nemesis - herself - and back again. Does her destiny await in the unexplored depths of the cosmos, or in a toxic wasteland of her own making? Does she have the will to shape her own future, or is she a slave to her myopic wants and impulses?

Engaging the matriarchal structure of the beehive, Amanda Moore explores the various roles a woman plays in the family, the home, and the world at large. Beyond the productivity and excess, the sweetness and sting, Requeening brings together poems of motherhood and daughterhood, an evolving relationship of care and tending, responsibility and joy, dependence and deep love.

This is a poetry collection from 2020. This is dark poetry that reflects the terrible year 2020 has been. There are about 72 poems and some journal entries.

From the emotional highs and lows of love won and lost to the feelings of hope, fear, anxiety, and loss, this anthology of poems journeys through the ephemera of everyday life - pausing here and there in the realm of dreams.

A poem about consent.

Am I My Mother's Child is a poem about a daughter questioning her maternal lineage while experiencing cruelty from mother.

Black Man Cry and Not a Care Was Delivered details the heartbreak a Black man experiences when he feels the pain that he causes others.

The Underbird is a modern comeback story of a downtrodden underdog that makes a revolutionary comeback.

Black Boy Say You: Help Mama, Lost Be Mind offers a modern take on spirituality and mental health and details the worries of a young Black boy that fears his mind wanders too far.

Indecency is boldly and carefully executed and perfectly ragged. In these poems, Justin Phillip Reed experiments with language to explore inequity and injustice and to critique and lament the culture of white supremacy and the dominant social order. Political and personal, tender, daring, and insightful - the author unpacks his intimacies, weaponizing poetry to take on masculinity, sexuality, exploitation, and the prison industrial complex and unmask all the failures of the structures into which society sorts us.

I Asked the Wind is a sweeping adventure into our most basic drive for intimacy. If you like raw primal emotions, touching scenes, and joyous celebrations, then you'll adore Valerie Nifora's exploration of the soul.

Sem poesia, a vida seria a morte. Imersa no cotidiano que escolheu, marcado por morte e sofrimento, a médica paliativista Ana Claudia Quintana Arantes fez da poesia a sua estratégia para não sucumbir.

With his dazzling ability to set words spinning, Amit Majmudar brings us poems that sharpen both wit and knives as he examines our "life in solitary". Equally engaged with human history and the human heart, Majmudar transfigures identity from a locus of captivity to the open field of his liberation....

These poems on resilience offer a durable hope for hard times. They were all written in June and July of 2020. Ranging from an ode to hackneyed poems about the moon to free verse about schizophrenic walls, these poems should at least give you something new to think about and read to get your mind off of the current pandemic. May the perspective offered in these writings help ease your suffering.