Publisher's Synopsis
Using an unconventional blend of traditional and avant-garde forms, this collection of poetry explores both the elegiac tradition and the 21st century attitude of remembrance and grief. Encountering a wide range of arresting events—from a best friend's suicide to the war in Afghanistan and improvised memorials to the plastinate corpses of Body Worlds—these innovative poems survey the forces and forms that shape what and how people mourn. The lively lines, vivid images, and richly-textured voices of the collection are composed in various forms—the lyric, the ballad, the graphic poem, and the fabricated document, among others—as a means of grappling with the many acts and practices that link the living and the dead.
