Jennifer Burd’s newest poetry collection explores the many ways we deal with loss.
Jennifer Burd’s second full-length collection, Day’s Late Blue, was released by Cherry Grove Collections last year.
its scarves upon the river.
Interested in both loss and growth, Burd shows us how life goes on after losing a loved one. We learn that things come and go, but we can always grow from what we lose by cherishing the environment that surrounds us.
Even though the speaker is drained of energy, she admires nature, watching the animals that work hard for their own survival and how they somehow know exactly what they need to do. The imagery in these first two stanzas immediately sets up the poem’s tone and relates back to the theme of loss. The enjambment here also leaves the reader hanging from line to line. This is seen in lines four and five: “watching the birds / in their quick-numbered / moves.” Burd leaves a phrase on the edge for the reader’s contemplation while also keeping them focused on the poem.
Not only is it traumatic to suffer a loved one’s death, but these two stanzas convey a feeling that it is even worse when it is slow and painful. Throughout the poem, the speaker’s mother’s memory worsens. Sometimes it is not just us that lose them, but that they slowly lose us, too.
and still changing, seeing this autumn through.
Assistant poetry editor Taylor Worsham is a senior in the Creative Writing program at Lake Superior State University. Her work has appeared in Snowdrifts; last spring, she was the 2018 recipient of the Stellanova Osborn Poetry Scholarship. Taylor currently resides in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan.