Gentling the Wild Beast: Imagery as a Path to Grief Writing

By Helene Kiser

In my husband’s dream about a month before he died, he saw me seated at a table in a funky bookstore, a steaming mug of tea and a stack of books waiting to be signed. A line of people jostled in front of him, chatting, tugging off knitted stocking caps. Some clutched a book with my name on the cover, titled The Cancer Poems.

This book will never exist.

I went on a poetry-writing hiatus after the birth of our children. My husband, a fiction writer and essayist, also pi...