Posts Tagged ‘grief’
Poetry Friday: “After”
September 30, 2016
Grief is a state of being that almost defies articulation. When you’re in it, it consumes and seems present in everything. Marjorie Stelmach focuses the lens of this poem on small scenes from the natural world—frames at once ordinary and suffused with loss, as befits the claustrophobia of mourning. The speaker here admits to wanting…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “Visitation Rights”
September 23, 2016
I sometimes talk to friends who have died. Especially to friends who acted as spiritual guides for me during their lives here. I continue to ask their advice when I’m in distress or need guidance. I believe there’s a very thin and permeable line between mortal life and eternal life. This is why Jeffery Harrison’s…
Read MoreBlood Lines
August 4, 2016
Last September, I was in Philadelphia for the first time since my freshman year of college. In the train station, I paid attention to what was new, though I suspect memory shouldn’t take a conscious effort. I thought it would be easy, that I could walk into the mall, down the escalator (I remembered this…
Read MorePoetry Friday: Four Sonnets
July 29, 2016
Sonnets meditating on illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages may sound a bit sanctimonious, even borderline pompous, but like all the best sonnets, Melissa Range’s subvert expectations. The sonnets, each named for a pigment monks used to color the manuscripts, explore the seedy underbelly of each pigment. For starters, they are all highly toxic. Also, kermes-red…
Read MoreFifty Shores of Grief
June 14, 2016
I write this the evening of June 12, 2016, the day forty-nine people died in the worst mass public shooting in recent US history. A few hours before hundreds of people faced unspeakable terror, my husband and I finished the first season of Justified, a series about Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), a U.S. Marshal who returns…
Read MoreThe Long Regretful Wait
May 19, 2016
My mother’s quavering voicemail was right: I hadn’t called in a long time. I justified my neglect with the assurance that I’d called on her birthday, I’d called on Mother’s Day, I’d made my dutiful calls even though I suspected she was mad at me. I made them and she didn’t answer. I hadn’t called…
Read MoreGrief and the Weight of Glory
May 17, 2016
The wind whips through the quilts and sheets on our clothesline, cracking now and then like a benign thunderclap, tugging at the clothespins I inherited from my grandmother’s childhood farm. My daughter and I watch them as we swing together on the playset her father built a few seasons ago, before she was born. This…
Read MoreThawing at the Edges
March 8, 2016
When the spring teases me one day, outplaying the winter dullness for just an afternoon, I go for a solitary walk. In my seven years in the Midwest, I’ve come to dread this part of the year. It’s not the liturgical season of Lent or the lament that comes along with it that I dread (lament…
Read MorePoetry in a Season of Lament, Part 2
February 23, 2016
Two Poets Laureate On Grief, Detachment, and Finding New Ways to Live, Part 2 Continued from yesterday. Read Part 1 here. Sarah Arthur: As Poet Laureate of Ohio, in what ways do you see the bardic role of the poet as “lamenter-in-chief” having changed over time? What role do you see a contemporary American poet…
Read MorePoetry in a Season of Lament, Part 1
February 22, 2016
Two Poets Laureate On Grief, Detachment, and Finding New Ways to Live, Part 1 In my role as the curator of three literary guides to prayer for Paraclete Press (At the Still Point, Light Upon Light, and the newly-released Between Midnight and Dawn), I have the coolest job. Not only do I get to…
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