The Brilliant Beyond - Paperback

by Ann Dixon (Author)

The Brilliant Beyond: Poems of a Long Goodbye is quietly brilliant. It has the depth of a great mountain range in a mere handful of pages. It moved me to tears, and even better, it moved me to understanding some things I thought I already knew about marriage and about grief Here you meet a couple at the beginning and the end-with caregiving in between. Nature and weather convene around both, then around the one that stays after the other has left. This book is so rare that, upon finishing, I wanted to thank the author-and start it again.

-Molly Peacock, author of The Widow's Crayon Box

The Brilliant Beyond: Poems of a Long Goodbye traces the landscape of love, illness, loss, and the persistent work of living on. In spare, vivid poems rooted in the natural world-snowfall, ravens, forests, sea wind-Ann Dixon chronicles the years surrounding her husband's final illness and death, and the life that follows.Clear-eyed and compassionate, these poems embody both the devastation of widowhood and the stubborn persistence of love. The collection is a deep meditation on absence, resilience, and the mysterious ways our dead remain present. The Brilliant Beyond enacts grief 's long arc-and honors the courage required to keep living within it.

-Erin Coughlin Hollowell, author of Corvus and Crater