If the condition of grief is nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal.

Funerals cost so much money, and are likely to be an additional source of stress in this recession - it's sad that we don't have a more humane, less commercialized way to approach burial.

And after my mother's death I became more open to and empathetic about other people's struggles and losses.

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

Faith does help mourners survive their loss, some studies suggest; but I imagine one still struggles.

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.

'Hamlet' is the best description of grief I've read because it dramatizes grief rather than merely describing it.