PREORDER – Shipping in early December.
This collection of poems arose in the aftermath of the author’s profound loss of his grandson Rory, who was killed at the age of 21 by a drunk driver in Wilmington, North Carolina. Confronted daily with the temptation to retreat from life, he instead turned to language as a way of moving through overwhelming grief—not as therapy, not as art, not in search of closure, and not to impose meaning on what remains senseless, but simply to give voice to the unendurable and to speak of it.
“To anyone who has lost a love—which is all of us—a parent, child, friend, lover—these remarkable words are for you.”
—John Pielmeier, author of Agnes of God and Hook’s Tale
“Deeply personal, deeply universal, Steve Lewis’ finely-crafted poems will clench your heart with salty grief, and then expand it, as love makes sacred ‘the sweet bread of sorrow.’ We are fortunate this imaginative and sensitive writer finds refuge in language.”
—Irene O’Garden, poet, author, Off-Broadway playwright
“Imagine Steve Lewis as a North Star just above the horizon. These pages hold sorrow, love, and the fierce ache of memory—not to explain the unspeakable, but to walk with it. Each poem feels like a sacred stone placed gently along the path of return.”
—Larry Winters, The Making and Unmaking of a Marine
Steven Lewis is a former Mentor at SUNY-Empire State College and The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College Writing, as well as a longtime freelance writer and editor. He is currently Senior Editor at WritersRead.org. His recent books include a novel, The Lights Around the Shore, and a poetry collection titled Fire in Paradise, co-authored with his daughter Elizabeth Bayou Grace.
Paperback
Page count: 63
Trim size: 5.5 x 9 in.
ISBN: 978-1-949933-33-8