Grief Land
Poems
In Grief Land Carrie Shipers explores the paradoxical nature of bereavement as both a universal human experience and an intensely personal one. The poems interrogate and dismiss common notions of loss and recovery through a series of letter-poems--to authors who have written about grief, to the speaker's dead husband, and to a society that believes it has the right to dictate how a widow should feel and act. The collection explores living with grief without being consumed by it and how to emerge into a new life.
Full of rage and empathy and precise renditions of loss, Grief Land should be required reading for anyone who must eventually confront this kind of pain.'--Jehanne Dubrow, author of The Arranged Marriage: Poems
Carrie Shipers is the author of Family Resemblances: Poems (UNM Press), Cause for Concern, and Ordinary Mourning. Her poems have appeared in New England Review, Prairie Schooner, the Southern Review, and other journals.
Section One
Grief Land
Letter from the Smallest State
Narrative Medicine
Death Is Not an Emergency
Preparing to Leave the Hospital: A Beginner's Guide
Dear Joan Didion,
Letter I Don't Know Where to Send
Teaching Hospital
Parallel Grief
Grudges: A Partial List
Letter I May Never Finish
Dear Mark Doty,
Section Two
On days I don't think I'll die of grief,
The angry widows
Holiday Letter
Dear Grief,
Malpractice Letter
User Agreement
Alternate Endings
Dear Joyce Carol Oates,
Discharge Letter
Dear Gail Godwin,
Interment Letter
What are days for?
Section Three
Dear Sandra M. Gilbert,
My dead husband
Grief Logic
Dear Sheryl Sandberg,
My imaginary therapist
Letter Started on My Steering Wheel
Back-to-School Letter
The Offices of Grief
Birthday Letter
Dear Atul Gawande,
Neighborhood News
Letter Started Just Before You'd Been Dead One Full Year, Then Finished Later
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
