Because What Else Could I Do: Poems [Paperback]

Winner of the 2020 Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award

Because What Else Could I Dois a sequence of fifty-five untitled short poems, almost all of them addressed to the poet’s husband during the six months following his sudden and shocking death. Perhaps best known for her historical explorations of sociopolitical issues, Martha Collins did not originally intend to publish these poems. But while they are intensely personal, they make use of all of her poetic attention and skills. Spare, fragmented, musical even in their most heartbreaking moments, the poems allow the reader to share both an intimate expression the poet’s grief and a moving record of her attempt to comprehend the events surrounding her loss.

"Collins captures the variations in the voice of grief: confusion, despair, irony, and talismanic attention to small details. These poems are stripped and spare; they read almost like erasure poems or like listening in on the poet talking to herself only half aloud. . . . This small book urgently and unflinchingly captures the shock and reverberation of unexpected grief." —Booklist
 

 “Collins renders the most humbling, gorgeous, and inscrutable features of human existence as if they might be made legible.” —Publishers Weekly Starred Review
 

"A dazzling poet whose poetry is poised at the juncture between the lyric and ethics. Those who have followed Collins’ books have long since realized that no subject is off limits for her piercing intellect."  —AWP Chronicle
 

“Martha Collins is a weaver of emotion, and she spends a great deal of time meticulously describing grief in a beautiful, heart wrenching way.Because What Else Could I Dowill leave readers captivated by love.” —l³6