Grief Poetry

There is light...This collection of poetry is a personal reflection of the author’s experiences amid the Covid-19 crisis and the world around us. He watched the reports on television, spoke with first responders, and witnessed many who died from this horrible virus and the toll it has taken with families. Covid-19 brought out the horror of our society - friends, family, and neighbors fighting amongst themselves - but it also revealed those who love and care for their fellow man.

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.

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.

In these poems, Kleber-Diggs names delight in the same breath as loss. Moments suffused with love—teaching his daughter how to drive; watching his grandmother bake a cake; waking beside his beloved to ponder trumpet mechanics—couple with moments of wrenching grief—a father’s life ended by a gun; mourning children draped around their mother’s waist; Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. Even in the refuge-space of dreams, a man calls the police on his Black neighbor.

In The Day-Breakers, poet Michael Fraser imagines the selflessness of Black soldiers who fought for the Union during the American Civil War, of whom hundreds were African Canadian, fighting for the freedom of their brethren and the dawning of a new day.

Soul Speaking is a collection of emotional poetry straight from the soul. Every human emotion from love to hate, joy to grief, celebrating newfound friendships to healing from toxic people, is captured in these free verse poems. Whether these words haunt you or heal you, their beauty, depth, and power will certainly never leave you.

Clara Jean Beaman Walker was the third of seven children born to Cora and Clarence Beaman in Knoxville, TN, in 1910. Considered to be “Little Mother” by her siblings, she always gave her best to her birth family and to the family she created with her husband, John Albert Walker. Three sons came from this union: Johnny, Clarence, and Henry. A teacher at heart, Jean saw each child before her and helped them navigate home economics, English, and realizing their potential.

Esta obra es la esencia nostálgica que brota del rincón de mi existencia, las que presento en versos los que quizás muchos ojos leerán y al hacerlo no verán, mas mi voz gritara aunque quizás no se oiga, tal vez porque soy la simple lagrima que comienza a recorrer a ciegas y en la oscuridad los senderos de una faz desconocida. En cada uno de estos poemas me encuentro, porque cada uno formo parte de mi ser en algún momento de mi vida y en algún instante de mi vida fueron mi vida en ese instante.

A Preponderance of Thoughts is an ode to surviving depression. It outlines the author's frantic yet palpable emotions in a fight to stay alive. The poems explore and tackle the many questions asked when one's mind is spiraling into a perfect mess. An allegory of sorts that showcases the many fractured phases of a damaged existence. Outlined is the transition of a defeated soul metamorphosing into an empowered and victorious spirit.

In an abandoned dance studio, there's music and dancing unheard and unseen by anyone. The whispers in the shadows laud praises upon the figure that spins around the room. Nothing moves, and yet everything moves around the room. Darkness and light intertwine and dance to cast the shadows of the world. A dance that goes beyond the borders between the worlds is performed within flickering shadows.

A genre-bending exploration of poetry and human migration—another revelatory expedition from the National Book Award–winning poet who changed the way we see art, the museum, and the Black female figure. Winner of the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Twenty-five years ago, after her maternal...

In the early 1990s, eight people living in a small conservative Florida town alleged that Dr. David Acer, their dentist, infected them with HIV. David's gayness, along with his sickly appearance from his own AIDS-related illness, made him the perfect scapegoat and victim of mob mentality. In these early years of the AIDS epidemic, when transmission was little understood, and homophobia rampant, people like David were villainized. Accuser Kimberly Bergalis landed a People magazine cover story, while others went on talk shows and made front page news.

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.

Undo the Heartbreak is an extensive collection of 150 poems arranged thematically: Love. Loss. Hope. Grief. Dichotomy. Torment. Nature. Dreams. Nightmares. This entire anthology, 10 years in the making, shines guiding lights for those who have grown weary and lost in times of darkness and despair. It offers a reminder that we have inherent power within ourselves to Undo the Heartbreak caused by any trauma. When brought back from the brink, fresh hope may be found, if only we choose to allow it.

We Are the Winter People is the collected works of Jenny Rowbory. The diverse range of poetry deals with love, loss, and the poet's ever-changing relationship with faith. Despite the struggles depicted within the work, it is an ultimately empowering collection, filled with strength, determination, and hope.

The Life of a Wannabe Mogul: Mental Disarray, Bella Thorne’s collection of illuminating and inspiring poems chronicles her personal struggles, relationships, and wild-child lifestyle, all with her trademark wit and wisdom.

Honeybee is a collection of raw, honest, and intimate conversations with oneself that lead you on a journey of reflection. By writing truthfully about the intricacies of her experiences, Rideau’s first collection of work is one that will speak to the very depths of those who read it, inspiring a will to question, heal and empower.

Laurence McKeown almost died in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh/Maze Prison in the North of Ireland, following 70 days on hunger strike in 1981. In later years, he helped facilitate poetry workshops in the prison and co-founded a prisoners magazine. In this, his debut collection of poems, written both during his incarceration and in subsequent years, Laurence reflects upon his developing political consciousness, exploring themes of politics, family, comradeship, longing, desire, and love.

This exciting collection of free-form poetry with over 40 poems by Susan J. Farese, MSN, RN, is a sharing of both professional and personal thoughts and feelings. Susan is a strong advocate of the creative use of poetry to express the wonderment, frustration, dedication, and the love of nurses for their profession and their patients.

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Memoir. Suppose Muscle, Suppose Night, Suppose This in August explores how anxiety and escape can shape a life from childhood to adulthood. This hybrid of lyrical essays and poetry weaves a delicate thread across the country, through dreams and nightmares, euphoria and fear, and intimacy and distance, always with particular attention to form and language. With dreamlike imagery, a unique inventiveness, and emotional clarity, the collection dissects that which we are too afraid to touch in our waking hours.