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we’re living"
In this unique collection, readers find poems dedicated to Adam, a man whose suicide deeply affected those around him. The poems in this collection not only celebrate Adam as a person, but they also act as a means of processing the grief and despair his suicide left those in his life. Poems like "The Funeral Home" offer insights into prophetic moments that held no significance prior to the beloved one's passing. In "Some Other Way," an emotional speaker confesses heartfelt confusion in death's wake. In "The End," the speaker wonders when they will say Adam's name for the last time, and the poem gently reminds readers that the dead are "still alive somewhere breathing in the ashes of the universe like a god."
Philosophically powerful, this collection offers those who have lost loved ones a new way to grieve. It embraces the idea that the grieving process is individualized and that writing can be a cathartic way of processing. The poems in this collection rely on long narrative structures. These narrative structures reinforce the speaker's voice and engage one so completely that the speaker's grief becomes the reader's. At its core, however, the book challenges traditional ideas about grieving and death, and it reminds a person that mourning is an individual experience, no matter what society dictates or suggests. Like the poems in Colin Pope's Why I Didn't Go to Your Funeral, these poems are haunting. Their speaker, much like the speaker in Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Lament," is timeless. With its personalized message about mental health and suicide, this collection is one for the times.