Sandra M. Gilbert, editor

Inventions of Farewell

A collection of poetic responses to loss—both consolation and inspiration to any reader.

Death has always served as one of the most powerful catalysts for poetry. Whether with Dylan Thomas, counseling readers to "Rage, rage against the dying of the light," or with Walt Whitman, taking comfort in the serene arrival "sooner or later" of "delicate death," poets throughout history have faced the mortal losses that all of us inevitably encounter. Inventions of Farewell collects English language poems of mourning from the late middle ages to the present. Aesthetic assumptions and poetic styles have altered over the centuries, yet the great and often terrifying themes of time, change, age, and death are timeless. The poems here—from Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sharon Olds, Stanley Kunitz, and W. S. Merwin—trace the trajectory of grief, but they also illustrate how the deepest sorrow has produced countless poignant and resonant works of art—words that can aid us as we struggle with our own farewells.