“Septimus” by Rachel Wetzsteon - A personal look at a poem considering the...
So often we are conditioned to think of death as something tragic. And, undoubtedly, losing someone is heartbreaking. It shakes your entire world. It changes the way you move through your day to day. I...
View Article”Song” by Christina Rossetti - A look at the serenity and peacefulness that...
A renowned poet, Christina Rossetti has a way of enchanting readers with her beautiful words and imagery. Even in her poems about death, Rossetti crafted an enthralling and almost whimsical moment for...
View Article“White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field” by Mary Oliver - Contemplating...
Mary Oliver is a contemporary anglophone poet beloved by many for her universally resonant contemplations drawing on metaphors from the natural world. Many of her poems are suffused with humbleness,...
View Article”Requiem with Coal, Butterflies and Terrible Angels” by Traci Brimhall - A...
The idea of death often conjures unique images for different people. While death is inevitable, we all envision it a little differently, and we all deal with it in different ways. This poem, “Requiem...
View Article“Gone From My Sight” by Henry Jackson Van Dyke - Perfect funeral poem...
The poem “Gone From My Sight” by Henry Van Dyke, a mid-19th century American poet, is an evocative and deceptively simple narrative about watching a ship sail out of a harbor into the vast, open sea....
View Article”Halo” by Melissa Stein - A captivating poem that offers an intimate look at...
Melissa Stein is an incredibly talented author. The San Francisco poet’s work has been published in a variety of journals and anthologies, and for good reason. Her writing is visceral — the imagery it...
View Article“Love Dogs” by Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi - Poem describes the how grief is the...
Thirteenth century Persian poet Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi is widely known for his poems of ecstasy, devotion and praise for the great mystery of the human experience. His poem “Love Dogs” speaks of a cry...
View Article“For the Anniversary of My Death” by W. S. Merwin - A poet ponders the world...
In “For the Anniversary of My Death,” American poet W.S. Merwin muses on life and his transient place in it. The poems beings, Every year without knowing it I have passed the day When the last fires...
View Article“Warning” Looks at Our Life Choices as We Age - Poet Jenny Joseph has...
The poem I have chosen to look at today is “Warning” by British poet Jenny Joseph. Some people also refer to the poem by its first line, “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple.” The poem deals …...
View Article“A Dog Has Died” Reflects Complexity of Human Grief - Pablo Neruda's factual...
Pablo Neruda is a great master of understatement, weaving the sparest details around the complexity of loss with a cry that carries its own weight and does not ask to be comforted. The first four lines...
View ArticlePoem Explores Intimacy and Alienation in Grief Journey - Margaret Atwood's...
In her poem “Variation on the Word Sleep“, well-loved Canadian poet Margaret Atwood (1939-) uses sleep as a metaphor for the highly personal, often isolating and poorly rehearsed journey of loss and...
View Article“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe Explores the Characteristics of Grief - A bird...
Edgar Allan Poe published “The Raven” to mixed reviews in January of 1845. He was paid only a modest fee for his work, which did not become famous until well after his death five years later. The cause...
View Article“The Laughing Heart” by Charles Bukowski - Simple acknowledgment of mortality...
American poet Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) is well-known in the literary world as an irreverent, tell-it-like-it-is kind of writer who spoke his truth — his whole truth — even when it was overtly...
View Article“Try to Praise the Mutilated World” by Adam Zagajewski - Funeral poem finds...
“Try to Praise the Mutilated World” (2002) by Polish poet Adam Zagajewski resonates with his characteristic themes of night; dreams; history and time; infinity and eternity; silence and death. By...
View Article“Death Sets a Thing Significant” by Emily Dickinson - A poem about cherishing...
Even if you’re not a huge fan of poetry, you’ve most likely heard of mid-19th century poet Emily Dickinson. Born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson spent most of her life completely isolated...
View Article“On Pain” by Kahlil Gibran - Timeless funeral poem coaches us to meet the...
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. So begins Kahlil Gibran’s...
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“To An Athlete Dying Young” by A.E. Housman - The benefits of living a short...
Alfred Edward Housman’s poem “To an Athlete Dying Young” was published in 1896. Housman was a professor of Latin at the University of London and, finally, at Cambridge. His sad, pessimistic poems spoke...
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“Remnant” by Jean L. Kreiling - Allowing the storm to transform...
“Remnant” by Jean L. Kreiling challenges our desire to go back to the way things were. We all wish for that at some point or another, being tugged out of our comfort zone by life’s insistent and...
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“Daddy” by Sylvia Plath Explores the Anger That Accompanies Loss - Poem...
Anger is a natural part of the grieving process. In her poem “Daddy,” American poet Sylvia Plath expresses rage at her father for his treatment of her when he was alive and for his untimely death....
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“Memorial to D.C.” by Edna St. Vincent Millay - Poem to a lost friend evokes...
There is an old joke among writers that nobody likes to write but everybody likes to have written. Nothing could have been further from the truth for poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay...
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