Poetry Lets Us Remember—And Move On
Where to turn when your emotions call for something other than straightforward prose: Your weekly guide to the best in books
After her second miscarriage, the poet Lindsay Turner found herself longing for some way to commemorate her loss. Friends assured her the experience was common; meanwhile, life continued as if nothing had happened at all. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she was now missing—she didn’t believe it was a person—but she still felt grief. “Was it possible,” she wondered, “that I had had nothing, and therefore that I had lost nothing?” It certainly felt like something.
So, being a poet, Turner did what she knew how to—she read poems. Two by Sharon Olds stood out: In