When we are grieving someone who has died, our regular, familiar ways of speaking, writing, and thinking don’t always work. Maybe that’s because we are still trying to communicate in earthly voices while the person has left this world.
Poets, throughout history, have translated and straddled those places for us, writing elegies and verse for those who have died in terrible moments, like the AIDS crisis, 9-11, and, now the COVID-19 pandemic. In this week’s show, “Our Time of Mourning,” we talk with physician-poet Rafael Campo, who has been treating patients with the virus, and writing poems for them.
Animals connect us in profound ways too, and Heather Swan tells Steve about an owl with a message who came to visit. Anne talks with historian Gillian O’Brien about how the particular way the Irish talk about -— and celebrate — death. And Charles takes us to a tattoo parlor, where he remembers his brother in an everlasting way.
“Death comes for all of us,” says Campo. “And poetry, I think, makes some kind of sense of it by narrating it, at least. I think it helps ease our own pain as we confront death.”
–Shannon