The Massachusetts Poetry Festival 2017

Using the five stages of grief as a starting point, two mid-career and two early-career poets discuss the poetry of grief via close reading of well-known poets, and read from their own work. Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief are usually understood to be denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Sample poets discussed might include Allen Ginsberg, Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon, Bruce Weigl, Anne Sexton, Rumi, Sylvia Plath, Sharon Olds, John Berryman and more. Via close readings of specific poems, panelists will illustrate the ways grief can be used to write poems of moral force and emotional impact.