Death Styles

A record of daily bewilderments and accidental concessions to hope after a momentous loss.

In this follow-up to her award-winning collection, Toxicon and Arachne, Joyelle McSweeney proposes a link between style and survival, even in the gravest of circumstances. Setting herself the task of writing a poem a day and accepting a single icon as her starting point, however unlikelyRiver Phoenix, Mary Magdalene, a backyard skunkMcSweeney follows each inspiration to the point of exhaustion and makes it through each difficult day. In frank, mesmeric lyrics, Death Styles navigates the opposing forces of survival and grief, finding a way to press against deaths interface, to step the wrong way out of the grave.