In the Mourning Grove by Susan Auerbach

Susan Auerbach’s debut collection shows us a poet who has faced unthinkable loss yet manages to distill grief into stunning poems, making each line count. We witness the great sorrow that the dual suicides of son and father imprint but also see the love and joy in remembering their lives. These moving, complex poems teach us about heartbreak and resilience and guide us as we seek to understand the unfathomable: How do you go on from this? The work is unflinching and gorgeous, the read a full-body experience leaving us hungering for more.

—Carla Rachel Sameth, Co-Poet Laureate of Altadena, CA, 2023 Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets, & author of Secondary Inspections

In the Mourning Grove is both a memoir and a collection of elegies. Grieving the loss of her 21-year-old son to suicide, Susan Auerbach also revisits the losses of her youth. She crafts such vivid and visceral poems that a film director could easily recreate them. The breezy opening poem, “anytime miss wish,’’ so tangibly revisits moments with her son—on the couch watching Japanese films together, buying him his “favorite sopping lasts-all-day/ chicken burrito at Lucky Boy”—that the pivot that follows is like an elevator drop. Using rhythm and sound the way a painter uses color, Auerbach threads the book with recurring sensory memories. In “Vanishing Act,” she describes inhaling her son’s old T-shirts, “still thick with thrift-store musk,/ smoke, sweat. What is the half-life/ of a young man’s funk?”

When some people bury a loved one after a suicide, they bury memories and mementos of their loved one’s life. This brave and loving book highlights how important it is to continue to celebrate and find solace in their lives.

—Kita Shantiris, author of What Snakes Want, aka Kita S. Curry, PhD, former CEO of Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, Los Angeles