Grief

Susan Palwick’s dark novel Mending the Moon muses on the bizarre paths that life takes someone as they attempt to heal from the tragic loss of a loved one.

An American tourist named Melinda Soto is murdered while on vacation in Mexico and her adopted son Jeremy is traumatized by her loss. His mother also left behind a close circle of friends, all of whom are grieving alongside her beloved Jeremy. To make matters worse, Melinda’s murderer is a Seattle teenager and after accepting an invitation to his memorial service, oddly enough, Jeremy finally starts the healing process.

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Alice Fulton’s exquisite poetry collection Barely Composed plunges into the depths of human grief and gives voice to our deepest sorrows and fears. Her lyrical pieces explore the nature of life, love, and death and unveils the deep emotional devastation that occurs when someone suffers through a traumatic event or is grieving the loss of a loved one.

Fulton’s work will pierce your heart as she takes you to the very brink of extreme grief, where one’s psyche is constantly being battered by the knowledge of death. She muses on how language often fails humanity when we’re pushed to that point, because there’s no words to describe the bone-crushing sadness that weighs upon one’s soul.

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Stephanie M. Wytovich’s Mourning Jewelry is a haunting poetry collection that revolves around the Victorian tradition of wearing mementos in honor of deceased loved ones. Many of these items included ashes placed into rings or necklaces made out of human hair. However, over time mourning jewelry evolved and became more of a fashion statement, even though most jewelry wearers lived on and continued to struggle with their grief. Wytovich’s poetry explores the sadness and the memories that the jewelry must have inspired for those who wore them day in and day out. Her collection shows readers that mourning and grief isn’t just a temporary state of being but instead is a permanent “sickness.”

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Two of the most complex emotions revolve around love and loss, and Teresa Leo’s Bloom In Reverse is a collection of poetry that confronts both. Instead of starting off in the future and reminiscing about the past, Leo’s poems are told in reverse order and revolve around the death of a close friend and the end of a very turbulent relationship. The poems begin with the soul-crushing grief that surrounds the loss of a loved one, and in her depression, the narrator makes the conscious decision to try and work through the devastating losses in her life by visiting local bars and attempting to heal her heart’s wounds by giving online dating a try as well.

As the poems move from soul-crushing grief to the heartache of having to learn to live without a loved one, this burgeoning desire to heal and start over is the catalyst that allows her to finally find a true love connection in another person. At the end of the collection, the readers are able to watch as the narrator comes to terms with her losses and is able to start a healthy, sustainable relationship with their new significant other.

From the deepest grief to the joyful start of a new relationship, Teresa Leo’s Bloom In Reverse takes readers on an incredible journey via poetry through the best and worst emotions that life has to offer.

Top image by Ervins Strauhmanis