As part of the Poetry Coalition’s programming, the Academy of American Poets asked five renowned poets to reflect on poems that helped them better understand or process grief. 

Poets reflected on loss, abandonment, heartbreak, and more in this series of micro-essays. 

The seventh annual programming initiative’s theme “and so much lost      you’d think / beauty had left a lesson: Poetry & Grief,” is from the poem “once the magnolia has blossomed” by Ed Roberson