Time of Grief: Mourning Poems presents a wide-ranging selection of poets from classical to modern writing on themes of grief and loss, death and mourning. Reaffirming poetry’s ancient and intimate link to ritual, this little anthology unfolds as a series of forty-nine stations, or points of reflection and meditation. Each station — a poem or series of poems — explores and engages with the suspended, in-between state of bereavement. What the poets in this volume seek is a solace paradoxically within and beyond words. Their elegies try to make sense of the pain and emptiness common to grief. Readers will encounter the recent Nobel Prize-winner Tomas Tranströmer’s epiphanic clarity, the immortal words of Li Ch’ing-chao and Zeami, Marina Tsvetaeva’s eulogy to Boris Pasternak, Mallarmé’s anguished lines for his son, Neruda’s praise-song to his friend, Rilke’s requiem, and William Bronk’s transcendental fugue.

Featured poets:

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) Eugénio de Andrade (1923-2005) Guillame Apollinaire (1880-1918) Gennady Aygi (1934-2006) Coral Barcho (b.1951) Bei Dao (b. 1949) Mei-mei Berssenbrugge (b. 1947) Johannes Bobrowski (1917-1965) Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) William Bronk (1919-1999) Kamau Brathwaite (b. 1930) Emily Brontë (1818-1848) Basil Bunting (1900-1985) Gaius Valerius Catullus (84-54 B.C.) Chang-Tzu (ca. 369-286 B.C.) Inger Christensen (1935-2009) Robert Creeley (1926-2005) Ali Chumacero (1918-2010) Robert Duncan (1919-1988) Hans Faverey (1933-1990) Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919) Forrest Gander (b. 1956) Allen Grossman (b. 1932) Gu Cheng (1956-1993) Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) H.D. (1886-1961) George Herbert (1593-1633) Yoel Hoffmann (b. 1937) Susan Howe (b. 1937) Hsu Chao (ca. 1200) Izumi Shikibu (ca. 970-1030) Philippe Jaccottet (b. 1925) Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (662-710) Kazuko Shiraishi (b. 1931) Louise Labé (ca. 1525-1566) Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) Denise Levertov (1923-1997) Li Ch’ing-chao (1084-1151) Luljeta Lleshanaku (b. 1968) Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) Nathaniel Mackay (b. 1947) Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) Bernadette Mayer (b. 1945) Dunya Mikhail (b. 1965) Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) George Oppen (1908-1984) Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) José Emilio Pacheco (b. 1939) Michael Palmer (b. 1943) Nicanor Parra (b. 1914) Octavio Paz (1914-1998) Qu Yuan (can. 340-278 B.C.) Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982) Rihaku (701-762) Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) Rudaki (858-954) Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) Sappho (ca. 630-570 B.C.) Aharon Shabtai (b. 1939) C. H. Sisson (1914-2003) Stevie Smith (1902-1971) Sophokles (496-406 B.C) Nathaniel Tarn (b. 1928) Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) Charles Tomlinson (b. 1927) Tomas Tranströmer (b. 1931) Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) Tu Fu (712-770) Rosmarie Waldrop (b. 1935) Dorothy Wellesley (1889-1956) William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) Wililam Wordsworth (1770-1850) Xi Chuan (b. 1963) Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443)