It's excruciatingly hard to describe the pain of losing a young mother, to return to the moment when she took her last breath and then, filled with grief and anger and pain, to try and move on.
But that's what award-winning poet Rick Black has done in his newest book, Letter Box: the geometry of loss, as visualized by illustrator Warren Lehrer.
For years Black (full disclosure: he's my brother) searched for a way to write about his grief, anger, and pain.
Only after years of mourning was he able to find the balance between silence and the words that would help him heal from the loss that he suffered as a young man.
His haiku-like vision of grief probes the very essence of what it means to confront death and suffer loss, while in the process he reveals the discovery that led him over time to a place of acceptance, a place where he could begin to understand the pain he felt as part of life and which, ultimately, led to healing.
Letter Box reads like an intense graphic poem thanks to the powerful illustrations that Lehrer has created to interpret Black's words.
Some pages have only a word: "Why?"
Others have multiple combinations of words: "We all live between parentheses."
He asks questions like "How do I turn the page?"
And he makes statements like "Grief isn't about understanding."
In the end, he provides an Afterword offering some background to how he came to write the book.
I confronted a dilemma. I was looking for a new way to write, a way for words to carry the full weight of their meaning. Neither established forms of poetry nor prose but something different. Was there a way to write about my grief, to remember, but also to let go, too?
For more than 40 years, I had been trying to tell the story of my mother's death, her painful last months and our family's struggle to deal with it. Words always piled up inside; they got in my way or in the way of each other. What would come first? Or second? How to describe what she had endured? How to convey the depth of emotions inside me?
If you get a chance to read a copy, you'll find that Black gives readers a remarkably fearless and honest account of the toll that mourning can take.
And he gives readers hope, too, that in time one can overcome grief and find a way to heal.
For more info about Letter Box, visit: https://www.turtlelightpress.com/products/letter-box-the-geometry-of-loss/
And for more info about Rick Black, visit: https://www.turtlelightpress.com/about-us/rick-black-owner-founding-editor/
To learn more about Warren Lehrer, visit: https://warrenlehrer.com/
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