Poetry has always had a strong pulse on the human condition. Part of the human condition that is universal is how death will come for all of us. As a poet myself, I know that the page is what holds me accountable to share about my lived experience through the multiple stanzas–or as the word literally translates to, “rooms”–for people to peer through. Whether they find familiarity with the poem or not, the hope is for the poem to build awareness and decrease loneliness.
This National Poetry Month, please take a look at these incredible poets of marginalized genders whose poetry has a pulse on death in honest, visceral, and beautifully written ways.
Five Poetry Books that Address Death the Way We Need It
Evelyn Berry’s (she/her) Grief Slut
from “i’m seven when I dredge a cold body from the creek”
a woman suffocates alone.
they carry her cold body
from the house below the mill
home is what we swallow,
what soon will kill.
Evelyn Perry’s use of poetry language through the lens of Southern queer trans life and the grief that comes with it is an astounding portrayal of poetry destigmatizing death.
Evelyn uses the explicit choice of using her deadname throughout the collection as a form of compassionate acknowledgement of who she once was and has since put to rest. Perry also uses this collection to mourn and commemorate a loved one who died by suicide: Abe.
Anti-obituary and anti-elegy without erasing why those forms of mourning exist in the first place is what makes Evelyn’s work so meaningful. In the opening poem of the collection “praise song in lieu of obituary,” Berry writes, “bless my body, prelude to a corpse, / prologue to whatever comes next.” In the midst of an exposure to grief, she makes sure to expose the reader to her acts of survival.
Noor (‘Ditee)’s (she/her) Unpublished Poems
from “Live”
in the air. ancestors aren’t here
for a reason—they live, they live
only sometimes accessible, twirling
in and out of reach of prayer.
I appreciate the space to make room for these unpublished poems that are about death while living in this realm with a Black body.
Noor’s visual portrayal of death in her poetry is a stunning one. Death is not the ghostly grim reaper with a scythe waiting to pray on the marginalized, although many of the privileged living have made Death that way for many marginalized folks.
Death is a gardener.
Death is also a glamour girl with Grief as her diva pet.
Death is rotting dancing roses in the wind.
When grief wants to make the author “abolish” death, the author realizes that death cannot be feared and ignored. Just because Death may become ugly, it does not make Death a bad thing or a bad word. Death helps us have an honest conversation about living. Living in nature, living while it’s hard to, encouraging the dead to live in their new realm since their transition.
Yes, we all have the right to die. But we all have the right to live too.
Adrienne Novy’s (she/her) Good Luck in the Real World
From “golden birthday”
Healing isn’t linear; It’s a long dandelion making its longer way
towards a rabbit’s mouth. I want to live, I want to live, I want to live.
Using Judaism, boygenius lyrics, and an earnest perspective on choosing to stay alive in the “real world” after wanting to leave it and having loved ones leave it, Adrienne Novy’s Good Luck in the Real World from Button Poetry is a remarkable achievement.
Adrienne’s honesty about suicidal ideation through the mundanities of barista work, high level stress family events, and having to make the move to go to a psych ward is what makes her poetry stay with you after you are done reading it.
Her poetry collection is a love letter to herself and the loved ones who have kept her alive through concert outings, drives to and from the psych ward, and celebrating queerness.
I love how she dedicates the book to the people in her life who keep her alive: “for Joy & Sarah, whose numbers I kept on my wall/for Michelle, who drove” My favorite poem of Novy’s in this book is a poem that references Michelle in “according to Jewish law, if I die by suicide, I can’t be buried with my family.” In the poem, Novy reflects not only on the traditions that may reinforce loneliness, but the blessings in her life that make her feel less alone, like “Shelly [who] hugs [the author] when she pulls into the driveway/& doesn’t ask questions.”
Mick Powell’s (they/she) Dead Girl Cameo
from “Phyllis Hyman refused to be lonely”
I REFUSE THE THEFT OF BLACK LABOR
I REFUSE TO COME UNDERDRESSED
I REFUSE TO BE LESS LOUD
I REFUSE TO BE LESS BLACK
I REFUSE TO BE LONELY
I REFUSE TO ABSORB THIS CURIOUS RAGE
Dead Girl Cameo is a series of love songs to Black women in the entertainment industry, women of color in the entertainment industry, and Black fems in the author’s personal life, who all died too soon of illnesses, plane crashes, assassinations, addiction to substances, and suicide.
Whether one is raised as a Black girl or not, there is an instinct to steer away from the topic of Black women and fems’ deaths. There is the impulse to do this out of ignorance or do this out of the refusal to re-open a wound. Especially when these deaths intersect with any hint of queerness, whether the people who died were queer or were perceived as queer. Powell throws those out the window in their book of poems.
Mick uses precision in form on the page (e.g. burning haibun, caesura, contrapuntal, cento, etc.) while interspersing the poems with archival news clippings of the deaths of Minnie Riperton, Whitney Houston, Aaliyah Haughton, Phyllis Hyman, Billie Holiday, and more. They also make sure to use archives from interviews from when these stars were still living.
It is especially insightful how there are persona poems from these people’s friends, lovers, and daughters along with poems through the perspectives of the art created by these people. One poem takes a queer lens to Aaliyah’s song “Rock the Boat.” Another poem is a conversation, or a duet, between Whitney and her daughter Bobbi Kristina.
Two gorgeous odes to the author’s friend, Dominique, who had died, are placed towards the end of the collection. Once the collection is complete, the author makes sure to place a bio to every “dead girl” referenced; including her own beloveds off-screen.
Lynne Schmidt’s (they/she) Dead Dog Poems
from “On How Dogs Choose Their People”
When the vet consoles me, saying,
She was sick before she was yours,
All I hear is,
She was yours.
It is so easy for humans to dismiss other humans’ grief of losing a beloved animal due to lack of experience of having a pet or lack of empathy towards what having a pet has offered humans while the pet was alive.
Lynne Schmidt’s Dead Dog Poems is a bittersweet ode to her dog, Baxter. Baxter has gotten the author through breakups, family drama, surviving domestic violence, and more. Probably more than what readers get to read about on the page. Schimdt intentionally uses the formatting of her poems to showcase how pointless it is to fight anticipatory grief and grief as a whole.
What makes grief for a death you can’t prevent inconsolable is how even though you know the time has come for that loved one to leave, it doesn’t mean you’re ever ready for them to. It doesn’t mean that you’ll ever let them go after all you have been through together as family. That’s what makes the depth of Lynne’s poems about Baxter and all of her living and dead pets in the collection so palpable.
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