Written in the morning of the day he died, William Stafford's last poem rattles with augury gilded by a sense of acceptance.
Tag: Death
Ellen Bass – If You Knew
What if you knew you'd be the last to touch someone? Ellen Bass draws us in to the brief moments of contact that fill our day and urges us to consider the fleeting nature of every life we meet.
Billy Collins – The Dead
Billy Collins runs with the folkloric notion that the dead are watching us and pushes the image all the way to a reverie of the departed 'rowing themselves slowly through eternity' in glass-bottomed boats.
I Had a Brother Once: A Poetic Ritual for a Sibling’s Grief
I Had a Brother Once is an elegiac and honest account of the devastation of suicide, the senselessness of grief, and the imperatives and difficulties of narrative when a loved one's life is on the page.
‘Telling Stories is the Single Thing That Makes Us Human’ – A Conversation with Adam Mansbach
A conversation with Adam Mansbach about loss, grief, and the process of writing his new book, I Had a Brother Once, in the form of an epic poem.
T.S. Eliot – East Coker from Four Quartets
T.S. Eliot's epic Four Quartets embodies a mystical vision of human life, time and memory sourced from Christianity and eastern philosophy.
Erika Michael – Entanglement
Relationships that defy boundaries: Erika Michael's 'Entanglement' is an ode to her late husband and a poem about love after death.
Issa – This Dewdrop World
Written shortly after the death of his daughter, Issa's haiku touches deeply on the heart of the human condition.
Stuart Gunter – The Wind Telephone
Stuart Gunter's poem, The Wind Telephone, engages with one of the more poignant symbols of the thousands of deaths following the 2011 tsunami in Japan.
Three-Pack as Another Name for Beauty
BY JOCELYN ULEVICUS An errand for her dying mother takes a daughter shopping for underwear.