Pub Date: May 15th, 2016
Format: Paperback
Pages: 64
Trim Size: 4.5″ x 6.25″
ISBN:  978–0–983547–82–2
Price: $9

In Epilogue, Juliet Patterson performs an act of intimate illumination as she narrates with poetic and visionary clarity the experience of her father’s death by suicide and her subsequent inquiry into his actions. Like the best work done at soul level, Patterson’s awareness that the focus of her quest is unattainable only makes it more necessary and more transformative. Epilogue explores the paradoxes inherent in mourning—its way of demanding privacy but also communion, interiority but also expression—with a stunning and wise lyricism. As Patterson investigates her experience of grief for meaning, her insights surface as moments of intense compassion available to us all.

Only with suicide is death truly an action, and the only act that removes the possibility of further questioning. For me, this was and is one of the most troubling aspects of dealing with my father’s death: the void left in the echo of the final gesture.

Juliet Patterson is the author of The Truant Lover (Nightboat Books) and Threnody (Nightboat Books). Her poems and essays have appeared widely in numerous magazines including American Letters & Commentary, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, Knockout, and Verse. She lives in Minneapolis near the west bank of the Mississippi.

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