The Unhanding

The Unhanding is a collection of poems in response to loss and the empty spaces it leaves behind. The collection leans on ekphrastic poems based on the visual art of Mark Rothko and others as a means of contributing to the narrator’s journey of sense-making in the face of various kinds of loss. The first section responds to the decline and deaths of older parents and middle-aged friends, miscarriage, the changing seasons of parenthood and friendship, and threats to our well-being. In the next section, poems present responses of anxiety and movement through time and space. The final section acknowledges loss but also renewed discoveries of domestic life, relationships, and fulfilling possibilities. The Unhanding speaks not only to a literal letting-go of physical life, but a letting-go of the angst that keeps a survivor from employing the empty spaces to move forward—and a surrender to what comes next.