Exculpatory Lilies: Poems

By: Susan Musgrave

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Synopsis: From the award-winning poet known for her bracing honesty and sharp yet compassionate gaze, here is a new collection of poems that explore life, marriage, addiction, death, and heart-wrenching grief.If grief is the willingness to be claimed by a story bigger than ourselves, Susan Musgrave writes, &“in that / tender wavering, I let grief in.&” "Writing about grief or tragedy is tricky. Hard to meet it at a heart-level without being effusive; hard to meet it at a brain-level without being cold. Hard not to make it about ourselves. Hard to meet it at a visceral level because it can take us out at the knees," wrote author Carrie Mac, responding to the death of Musgrave&’s partner, Stephen Reid, in 2018. Following this traumatic loss, in September 2021 their daughter, Sophie, died of an accidental overdose after a twenty-year struggle with addiction. But to say this is a collection solely about grief would be to miss the whole nature of Musgrave&’s voice and sensibility. Wit is one counterpoint; the natural world is another. The poems share a landscape whose creatures, minutely observed, wild and tame—the winged ones most of all—dance attendance on the helplessness of our brief and mystifying human lives. Throughout Exculpatory Lilies, Musgrave&’s alertness to even the most desolate places makes her personal sorrows astonishingly potent; and her scrutiny of language, and emotions, makes shot silk out of sackcloth and ashes.