As an avid reader when you've just lost someone you love it's hard to know what to read when you find yourself alone in the days after their death and the funeral. Well at least that's how I felt these past few days. I feel very strange if I don't have a book in my hands, in my handbag or on my nightstand etc. But every book that I had on loan from the library just didn't appeal to me. I wanted something easy to read yet something that felt deep and meaningful. Something contemplative... So I so...

““After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”EMILY DICKINSON‘.....A Wooden wayRegardless grown,A Quartz contentment, like a stone—This is the Hour of Lead—Remembered, if outlived,As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—First— Chill— then Stupor— then the letting go—‘D.H.Lawrence “.....“Or the wind shakes a ravel of lightOver the dead-black river,Or last night’s echoingsMake the daybreak shiver:I feel the silence waitingTo sip them all up again,In its last completeness drinkingDown the noise of me...

There are some hauntingly beautiful poems in this collection. The classics, like Emily Dickinson and Auden are represented as well as some lesser knowns. Those are the unexpected poems that express your emotions allowing you to surrender to your feelings of loss. You might want to seek out some silence, read on and find those that grab you. Read and reflect. Sit for awhile in your silence. The death of someone you know, the death of a family member and even the death of a stranger may raise ques...

What a wonderful condolence gift this book would be. These poems should be shared at funerals and wakes or read privately through the months of heartache. Poetry lovers will want this book on their home shelf to enjoy again and again. Kevin Young’s Book of Hours showed the world his gift for putting eulogy and grief on paper, and he used that insight in editing this collection. At the best funerals, we remember our loved ones with both tears and laughter, and these poems contain that wholeness o...

buying this bc gracie abrams herself recommended it to me

Grief recurs. Though it may help to recognize "stages" of grieving, many of us have been surprised by tears long after the first anguish of loss has receded. Not only anniversaries of deaths and other losses but small triggers--a smell, a song, a familiar laugh--can reawaken old sorrow. At those times it is a great gift to be able to receive and recite words that provide a place to put the pain. The poems in this beautifully arranged collection are a rich offering of language found and formed by...

This is a wonderful collection that has taken me months to wander through, to savor. Poetry seems to be read by fewer and fewer, that surmise supported by the shrinking shelf space dedicated to it in most bookstores (and the quizzical looks from friends as I mention I read it!). And that's a shame, because Poetry hits you on an emotional level that Prose often doesn't, at least in so many words. Who can read "Otherwise" by Jane Kenyon and not be surprised by a sucker punch to the gut? Many say t...

I properly finished this book today, going through a huge part of more than half the book at one go, and it was an intensive experience - I kept tearing up; the poems were so heartfelt, so necessary. And it stood out to me, how arbitrary life is, and utterly powerless - that all we can ever do is get through it, dealing with things as they come along, losing and recovering sensation over and over again. The cyclic nature of this is sometimes so overwhelming that you want to call life out on its

I loved this death and grief-related collection of poems. Though not going through a grief right now, this suited my somewhat melancholy state of mind. Grief- and losses- take many forms, not all of them death though that is the predominant theme here. I loved the infinite variety of quality poems. Too many to mention without feeling I might leave someone out. The quote by Faulkner: "I would rather feel grief, than feel nothing" really stays with me. I think I agree with it.

No doubt about it: these poems were hard to get through. So many tears cried while reading them but it was cathartic, in a way, to read what is in my heart, captured just so....I miss you every day--the heartbeat under your necktie, the hand cuppedon the back of my neck, Old Spicein the air, your voice delighted with stories.--"Father" by Ted Kooser...gone now, after the months of scanning, medication, nausea, hair lossand weight loss;remission, partial remission, gratitude, hope, lost hope, anx...

A few favorites here, but a lot that didn't hit the mark."Wait" by Galway KinnellWait, for now.Distrust everything, if you have to.But trust the hours. Haven't theycarried you everywhere, up to now?Personal events will become interesting again.Hair will become interesting.Pain will become interesting.Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,their memories are what give themthe need for other hands. And the desolationof lovers is the same:

I have about 47 slips of paper marking all the poems I like in this collection. If this weren't a library book, I'd have marked it up well. Divided into six sections: Reckoning, Regret, Remembrance, Ritual, Recovery, Redemption, there's, well, something for everyone, depending on, uh, what you're looking for. Only this isn't a self-help book of course. In here I found poets I hadn't heard of before whose work I'll investigate and poets I studied in school whose poems I was glad to read again. So...

A decent collection of poems about loss and grief. As others have noted, it starts out promisingly but doesn't quite follow through. I also found the title a bit of an odd nod to Elizabeth's Bishop's One Art, which is not about grief (although it is about loss) and famously opens with 'the art of losing isn't hard to master'; as someone who lost their father over a decade ago, if there's an art to losing, it's not one I've mastered yet. No collection can be comprehensive, but there were quite a

i recently lost a co-worker of mine in the most tragic of circumstances. after hearing the news, i could feel my body drawing me towards poetry as a healing mechanism. however, i just couldn’t find the right poems. this collection was exactly what i needed. it follows several different phases of loss and i found this helpful in truly comprehending my emotions. hearing from so many different poets allowed me to connect with others who understood the feelings i wasn’t even really aware i was feeli...

My friend Andrew M sent me this book in the mail as a gift, the first thing of any kind he had given me for years, and I was grateful, don't get me wrong, but as I am now close to 60, I wondered what he had in mind, and still don't know. All he said was, " I just thought it was the kind of book you would like." A themed book on the subject of grieving I like better is Naomi Shihab Nye's poetry collection, "What Have I lost?" which is not necessarily as much about death as Young's book is, but bo...

Too many books given to a griever are full of platitudes or very bad poetry. This is the exception. It is poetry, but good poetry, and arranged from "reckoning," through "regret" and "remembrance," through other sections, and finally to "redemption." The poets include Dylan Thomas, Anne Sexton,Ted Hughes, Emily Dickinson, and many other classic and contemporary poets. As a giever, I found it comforting in a sad way, simply seeing that someone else understood and, on top of that, had the talent t...

“...I imagine the earth when I am no more:Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.”Czeslaw Milosz

“The impact is simmering down, as intoa solvent liquid. That I’ll never hear your voiceagain, but through a medium likerain”-Jane Mayhall“What will survive of us is love.”-Philip Larkin

~Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.~ William FaulknerThis collection started off promising, but overall was ok, I didn't love it. I wonder if the editor, being a male losing a father, was just attracted to these poems versus others that might have been more meaningful for me, a woman who lost her mother. For example, he has some nice Mary Oliver ones, but where is Oxygen or In Blackwater Woods? Oxygen Everything needs it: bone, muscles, and even,while it calls the earth its home, the...

I didn't love the last section, but overall it's a really good anthology."When grief comes to you like a purple gorilla,you must count yourself lucky. You must offer her what's leftof your dinner, the book you were trying to finishyou must put asideand make her a place at the foot of your bed,her eyes moving from the clockto the television and back again."Matthew Dickman