When memory is a search-and-rescue mission, the struggle through to morning is a struggle through mourning

In this poetic exploration of love and loss amplified by personal and sociopolitical passings, award-winning author Daphne Gottlieb declares an indictment of systems, from systems created to leave people dying in the streets (?the bullet teaches us how to dance?) to the systematic erosion of memory due to dementia (?yahrzeit?). In the absence of any indoctrination around ritualizing death, Gottlieb was drawn to memorialize her experiences of the past through poems, including ?my dog teaches me things,? about the final lessons learned from her best friend, a chihuahua. What shines through in every poem is the exceptional moments that create love, how we survive the heartbreak of profound loss, and what we get to keep and carry with us always.

Daphne Gottlieb is the author of 11 books, including poetry books Why Things Burn, Final Girl, Kissing Dead Girls, and 15 Ways to Stay Alive. Her work has been published in more than 50 anthologies, literary journals, and periodicals, including McSweeney's, Tikkun, and Utne Reader. She is the winner of an Acker Award for Excellence in the Avant-Garde, the Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Award for Poetry, a Firecracker Alternative Book Award, and has been a five-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Gottlieb holds degrees from Mills College, Bard College, and Tulane University. She lives in San Francisco.