Poetic Grief

Name: Poetic Grief
Price: 80.99 AUD
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ISBN: 9781531514129

Form and Remembrance After National Socialism

Simone Stirner

$80.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Fordham University Press
07 April 2026

Literary studies: poetry & poets; 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000; The Holocaust; Jewish studies

Series: Verbal Arts: Studies in Poetics

Grief is non-linear and destabilizing. It can unravel our sense of time and relation to the world. Poetic Grief follows these effects across poems written in the wake of National Socialism. Moving beyond established paradigms of trauma and representation, the book offers a formally grounded and affect-oriented approach to post-Holocaust poetry that develops a new framework for understanding the relationship between reading poetry and the experience of grief.

Bringing together phenomenologically informed close readings and historical-political analysis, Poetic Grief considers how poetry can affect embodied experiences through rhythm and breath, how its complex semantic patterns can collapse epistemic certainty and upend the flow of time—like grief does. New readings of poets familiar to the context of Holocaust remembrance such as Paul Celan, Dan Pagis, Charlotte Delbo, and Irena Klepfisz appear alongside analyses of poets remembering National Socialism at different historical moments, including May Ayim, Audre Lorde, Ghayath Almadhoun, and Max Czollek. In their poetry, reading becomes an act of participating in relations that the book’s respective chapters describe as ""withness,"" ""ongoingness,"" and ""solidarities of grief""—modes of answering to and being with loss.

In a world shaped both by decolonization and the aftermath of the Shoah, Poetic Grief offers a new vocabulary for poetic remembrance alongside reflections about the role of grief in cultures of memory: To confront the force of grief in poetry is to rethink its place in cultures of remembrance, to see where it has been repressed and instrumentalized, and to create openings that respond to what cannot be contained and conceptualized about loss.

This book is a recipient of the Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award, administered by the Association for Jewish Studies.

By: Simone Stirner
Imprint: Fordham University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781531514129
ISBN 10: 153151412X
Series: Verbal Arts: Studies in Poetics
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 07 April 2026
Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Undergraduate , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Simone Stirner is Assistant Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University.

Reviews for Poetic Grief: Form and Remembrance After National Socialism

""Stirner provides an original, nuanced, and expansive analysis of poetry emerging in the prolonged aftermath of National Socialism. By examining poetic grief as a force that structures and de-structures, orients and disorients, she greatly advances our understanding of Holocaust and post-Holocaust poetry.""---Katja Garloff, Reed College