It's a blessing not to be alone in your grief but it's also painful to see your parents and siblings in pain.

A mother is beyond any notion of a beginning. That's what makes her a mother.

My theory is this: Women falter when they're called on to be highly self-conscious about their talents. Not when they're called on to enact them.

Be patient with yourself. Don't make the loss harder by thinking you should be a certain way, or have bounced back, etc.

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.

Loss is so paradoxical: It is at once enormous and tiny.

Many Americans don't mourn in public anymore - we don't wear black, we don't beat our chests and wail.