We have an idea - a very modern idea - that dying is undignified. But I think this is because we have the illusion that we can control our bodies and our fates.

This is part of the complexity of grief: A piece of you recognizes it is an extreme state, an altered state, yet a large part of you is entirely subject to its demands.

Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me.

Our minds are mysterious; our conscious brain is like a ship on a sea that is obscure to us.

With ferocity and extraordinary craft, Lizzie Harris has made a book of poems that resonates far beyond the personal stories it tells. Stop Wanting reveals, in every lyric, its author's profound metaphorical gifts. In its ironies and intensities, it brings to mind a writer like the young Sylvia Plath, though what is startling about Harris' s work is the way it combines those gifts with a muted, deft self-awareness. Most of all, these are wonderfully shaped, powerful, and surprising poems-a startling debut.

I was not raised with religion, and I had no faith before my mother died. On the other hand, when she died, I did not immediately feel she was "gone." I don't believe she is in something like heaven, but I also feel that we don't understand much about the nature of the universe. So I hold on to that uncertainty, at times.

A death from a long illness is very different from a sudden death. It gives you time to say goodbye and time to adjust to the idea that the beloved will not be with you anymore.