The Widow's Crayon Box
Poems
Format:Hardback
Publisher:WW Norton & Co
Published:5th Nov '24
£21.50
Supplier delay - available to order, but may take longer than usual.
After her husband’s death, Molly Peacock realized she was not living the received idea of a widow’s mauve existence but instead was experiencing life in all colors. These gorgeous poems—joyful, furious, mournful, bewildered, sexy, devastated, whimsical and above all, moving—composed in sonnet sequences and in open forms, designed in four movements (After, Before, When, and Afterglow)—illuminate both the role of the caregiver and the crystalline emotions one can experience after the death of a cherished partner. With her characteristic virtuosity, her fearless willingness to confront even the most difficult emotions, and always with buoyancy and zest, Peacock charts widowhood in the twenty-first century.
From “Touched:”
After you died, I felt you next to me,
and over months you entered gradually
into that lake and disappeared. Not gone,
but so internalized you’re not next to me.
"In The Widow’s Crayon Box, Molly Peacock harnesses the full power of grief, rage, and love in bristling sonnet crowns and lyrical poems. . . . Tenderness and hope [live] in these poems alongside verdant dreams of apples and kaleidoscopic colors, finally helping us imagine an end to suffering for ourselves and our beloveds. This is, indeed, a breathtaking book!" -- Hadara Bar-Nadav, author of The Animal Is Chemical
"[The Widow’s Crayon Box] bears ample witness to [Molly Peacock’s] wit and gusto, her sensuousness and curiosity, and her courage . . . Her poetic artistry, honed over the course of her distinguished career, enables her to find beauty and zest even in the most forbidding places—and having found them, to offer them to us." -- Rachel Hadas, author of Ghost Guest
"Molly Peacock has conjured touch, taste, smell, ghosts, anger, and laughter into a grown-up coloring book. Her Widow’s Crayon Box will retune your eyes and ears to grief. It did mine. I congratulate Molly on her hard-won book, which proves, once again, what poetry in the right poets’ heart and hands is good for." -- Cornelius Eady, author of The War Against the Obvious
"Bittersweet pleasures. . . . [W]hatever comes to mind, . . . pull up a chair, ‘listen, question, watch things heal.’" -- Nuar Alsadir, O, the Oprah Magazine
"Peacock roars to life . . . with formal verse that explained human pain and loss in monumental terms. . . . [She] straddles the Canadian-American divide and . . . serves as poetic inspiration . . . for poets of both nations." -- Shane Neilson, Poetry Foundation
"The hues of the crayons in this imaginary box paint a nuanced portrait of Peacock's past and present… She has accepted mortality, his and hers, and chosen to render it lyrical. The reader mourns with Peacock even more deeply because she so passionately presents what she has lost, in the most beautifully messy and unrepentant terms." -- Leslie Gray Streeter - Johns Hopkins Magazine
"From the prologue poem through the four sections of the collection, readers are treated to the fruits of Peacock’s honed skill. Through love to grief, rage, and compassion Peacock’s insight, curiosity and humour carry us through the nightmare of losing a loved one and take us out the other side. The Widow’s Crayon Box is a collection to read and reread." -- Kathryn MacDonald - Freefall Magazine
ISBN: 9781324079439
Dimensions: 218mm x 147mm x 15mm
Weight: 245g
112 pages