A book-length sequence of poems that dares to affirm the vast variety of emotional colors in loss and rejuvenation.
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.
Listen to the CBC radio documentary about The Widow’s Crayon Box, “What Can a Widow Be?” by radio documentarian Alisa Siegel.
The poems in The Widow’s Crayon Box have been previously published in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Plume, Liber, The Walrus, Grain, and others.
Find some of the poems in The Widow’s Crayon Box online:
Honey Crisp and Today My Task Is the Codicil in The Walrus.
The Widow’s Cloud and The Shadowlet in The Hudson Review.
Where Does It Live? and The Next World Is One of Ideas in Plume.
Notes From Sick Rooms in Plume.
Five Poems by Molly Peacock in Liber: A Feminist Review. (This costs $.99—worth it to support Liber!)