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.