Poetry serves a unique role in our lives, distilling human
experience and emotion down to truths as potent as they are
brief. There are two times most people turn to it: for love
and loss. Although collections of love poetry abound, there
are very few anthologies for the grieving. In The Art of
Losing, editor Kevin Young Kevin Young has introduced and
selected 150 devastatingly beautiful poems that embrace the
pain and heartbreak of mourning. Divided into five sections
(Reckoning, Remembrance, Rituals, Recovery, and Redemption),
with poems by some of our most beloved poets as well as the
best of the current generation of poets, The Art of Losing
is the ideal a gift for a loved one in a time of need and
for use by ministers, rabbis, and palliative care workers
who tend to those who are experiencing loss.
Among the poets included: Elizabeth Alexander, W.H. Auden,
Amy Clampitt, Billy Collins, Emily Dickinson, Louise Gluck,
Ted Hughes, Galway Kinnell, Kenneth Koch, Philip Larkin,
Li-Young Lee, Philip Levine, Marianne Moore, Sharon Olds
Mary Oliver, Robert Pinsky, Adrienne Rich, Theodore Roethke,
Anne Sexton, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas, Derek Walcott,
and James Wright.