There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.
~ Aeschylus, in Ancient Greece considered the father of tragedy
I have a confession to make. The you in my writing is never the same you. In fact, it is rarely one you. But rather, it is a fractured you, a many-a-you, a you that contains accumulated gooseflesh, pounding hearts, half-whispered promises. The you is breathless, tongue-tied. Its iterations contain only extremes. And of course some of those yous are fictitious, people I haven’t met yet, those I’ve met for an instant, and, whether I like it or not, those who have passed. I want to point out that this doesn’t weaken that you. If anything, it makes it a star that contains everything that is bright, everything that burns.
My second confession is that despite my anxiety, I believe in happy coincidences, chance encounters, letting things happen as they will. And so, when I receive and read Phantom Number by Spring Ulmer and Blue Atlas by Susan Rich, both centering around grief, I can’t help but draw parallels. I let the texts seep in, aided by my pencil markings, my marginalia and theirs slow cooking.
Words without end— / You wrote: mourning is a state of a compass—
(from Dear April by Ulmer)
Could a compass—initially used / in fortune-telling, invented in the Han Dynasty—buoy / her with its diving arrow, its quivering and irregular / heartbeat
(from Compass by Rich)
Each em dash cutting, leaving out, letting us in, letting us bleed out. We talk about loss while we talk about everything else because there is no separation between what we once had and what we have now, what we miss and what we get to still endure and enjoy. And so, both Rich and Ulmer seem to keep a hand on the subject of their loss while they navigate the world through verse. But when you keep one hand in one place, all you can do is dance in circles. While Ulmer exerts an amount of control by writing an Abecedarian of loss (for her best friend April), Rich helps us move geographically through hardy and dense terrain. It is, after all, possible to trace a map of the world even with one hand.
Grief has often been described as the loss of a part of ourselves. He left and took a piece of me with him, we might say. And whether this has to do with death or ‘simply’ parting, the future becomes tinted a somewhat different hue.
Sometimes after midnight, I steady myself / conversing with stars, readying for the world-to-come in a constellation of longing.
(from Curriculum Vitae by Rich)
Feather fell / from the sky— / Felt so foreign—
(from Fatally Kneeling on the Neck of by Ulmer)
Let’s not make the mistake of looking at these two collections with delicacy or pity. They present their strengths already in their fierce titles, for example—Your Still Life Builds a Home Inside My Head (Rich); Plaque That Read Battle Now Reads Massacre (Ulmer). Both can co-exist, and must, if we are to go on. Because we don’t only long for the person, their company, their advice, their physical proximity, but we also wonder what the world has lost from their potential in it. Who might they have been and what might they have created? Where has uncomplicated joy gone?
Days a teapot makes an inconceivable beauty / out of nothing but steam in air—
(from Dead by Ulmer)
the gentle own of my heart / flapping in attempt to wake itself—
(from I Hear Cut Cedar Crying in the Far Field by Ulmer)
Don’t laugh; it’s been too long since I leaned / into the morning: bird-friendly coffee and blueberry toast.
(from Boketto by Rich)
Reality knocks often. These are not poets who hide behind metaphors. Rather, they are humans who offer metaphors so that we may understand there is connection even in the desperation of loss.
I may as well write: April / killed by racism, age 38—
(from Door of No Return by Ulmer)
There are nights that pummel your life, chart / an alternate course unasked for and colorless—the way it was / the first time you encountered the one ready to eat your heart
(from Shadowboxing by Rich)
I am your desired, your dreaded almost— / blue atlas and weeping willow— / the past, seen ahead; the necessary tomorrow
(from Metaphors by Rich)
Where are we following these ghosts? These are both collections that seek answers, an outward force that changes the past for a different outcome. Ulmer wants to undo the racism and misogyny that led to April’s misdiagnosis (“racism introduces dangerous amounts of inflammation into the body,” Ulmer writes, quoting Zakiyah Iman Jackson). Rich reaches for a choice in the past, wishes the choice could have been hers, that she could have borne this ghost to completion in her body. These are collections to keep close if you want poetry to save you, over and over, as it does.
Today, the sky saved my life / caught between smoked rum and cornflower.
(from Still Life with Ladder by Rich)
It is one-thirty in the afternoon— / It is pouring rain— / It isn’t my child lying there— / It’s water. Hi cloud—
(from Hauled to Shore, Propped Up as Art by Ulmer)
Miriam Calleja is an award-winning Pushcart-nominated poet, writer, workshop leader, and translator. She has hosted community generative writing workshops in Europe and the US for the past 10 years. She is the author of three poetry collections, two chapbooks, and several collaborative works. Her poetry has been published in anthologies and in translation worldwide. She has been Highly Commended for a translated poem by the Stephen Spender Trust and was recently the winner of the 2025 TableFeast translated poem competition. Her latest chapbook is titled Come Closer, I Don’t Mind the Silence (BottleCap Press, 2023). Her work has appeared in Plume, platform review, Odyssey, Taos Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Modern Poetry in Translation, humana obscura, and elsewhere. Miriam is from Malta and currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama. Read more on miriamcalleja.com and Permission to Write.