A must-have poetry collection about loss…
Haven’s latest explores loss and its aftermath with stark thought and insight. The poems range in scope from journal excerpts, inner monologue, imagery, poetry, and prose and navigate various stages of loss. Writing with skill, Haven effortlessly probes love, loss, pain, loneliness, and bleak longing, transforming almost overpowering grief into multilayered, deeply moving conclusions: “Lately, I have come to accept it. Welcome it. This probably/ impedes my progress. Do I choose this? Or am I just conscious of/ the path that was laid out before me?” Sadness is leavened with warmth: in “London,” Haven writes: “Our house between the trees/ A house in the south of France by the lake/ I walked down the path towards the water/ followed by the gardens either side of me.” “HOME again” is full of linguistic delights and keen emotion: “All of these moments, these decisions, these lack of/ decision, thoughts, interpretations, all of the good and the bad/ and the everything in between which leads us to the now.” Though grief and loneliness stay at the heart of the collection, Haven addresses other mundane concerns as well, including memories and the nature of familial bonds. This Intense, deeply touching collection that perceptively examines grief is a stunner. Readers will be ravished.
The Art of Leaving
By Sam Haven
Pub date July 21, 2021
ISBN 979-8537647386
Price $13.95 (USD) Paperback
