Power of Poetry, The - Dealing with Death

It will come to us all. One of life’s most difficult, most overwhelming feelings, is how to deal with death, whether it’s our own coming appointment or the passing of someone special and how life will be less than it was. Time stops. Time stutters. Time crawls. We grieve, we rage, we submerge ourselves under waves of pity, even guilt. We are raw with emotion. We attempt to celebrate the person, the legacy, when what we really want is to have them back, knowing that it is simply impossible. The memories remain, the years journey by, but now in a different way. Healing will come but it will scar, may leave us poorer for the loss. One helping hand may lie in the past. In this volume we turn through the centuries to find comfort, solace, explanation and above all some way to deal with the inevitable. Classic poets down the eons have wisely observed that there are many things, both great and small, that bring a sense of stillness, an aura of calm, a chance to re-engage with our feelings and emotions purely by taking time for moments to reflect, to breathe, to understand. With verse and poems from the likes of W B Yeats, William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edna St Vincent Millay, Rainer Maria Rilke and the calming balms of many others to help soothe the soul and bring the comfort we need.