Dead Language, by Jeanne Emmons

Good poetry will make you think. Great poetry will change the way you think. Though Jeanne Emmons was born and raised in Texas, she has been living, teaching, and writing and publishing poetry in Iowa for over four decades. In her latest book of poetry, Dead Language, Emmons returns to her Texas roots to come to terms with the death of her mother, a Latin teacher. The poems in this collection are at once deeply intellectual and immediately accessible. The intimacy of Emmons’s writing will feel familiar to anyone who has lost a loved one, struggling to move on and to preserve their memory at the same time. How do we come to terms with death and the continuance of life in its wake? Dead Language does not pretend to offer any definitive answers, but it provides a space for grieving and healing along the reader’s own path.