A Grief Sublime by Beth Robbins is a work of creative non-fiction that begins with the moment Robbins is informed of her husband’s sudden death in a car accident. The book moves in a fragmented way, from the aftermath of devastation, to Robbins’s childhood near Long Beach, New York to  moments in her marriage to Steve “Sproutman” Meyerowitz, to the lived experience of grief. Her navigation of grief becomes a hero’s journey and ultimately leads to rediscovery.

Distinguishing Robbins’s book is her lyrical style which brings readers into the direct and immediate experience of deep tragedy as well as literature. Robbins enters into conversation with Keats and Whitman, Melville and Dickinson, discovering, through these writers, that grief has amplified life’s spectrum, welcoming her into the realm of literature where imagination meets experience in new and profound ways.

“The fragmentation, or, perhaps better said, the shattering of my world led me to look for conversation, reconnection, dialogue,” says Robbins. “My poets, as I began to call them, offered me solace. They spoke to meaning and purpose. Somehow Steve’s death allowed me to (re)discover my strength.”

Written in  lyrical and narrative style, this heartbreaking story is ultimately hopeful and transcendent, transforming despair into a new experience of life. And a recognition of the love that remains after death.

PRAISE

“writing can save your life.

poetry can save your life.

and love.

well love can save your life a thousand times.

this book is a most lyrical, beautiful and profound rumination on grief, poetry, resurrection.”

—Maira Kalman

“Luminous, breathtaking, A GRIEF SUBLIME takes us gently by the hand and beckons us to walk beyond the edges of pain into a transcendent world where the dead and living co-exist. Emerson speaks in the forest. Whitman reaches out to us with ink-stained hands. Keats perches in a bedroom, waiting for us to fully wake. Robbins' haunting. poetic memoir lives seamlessly between realms of awake and asleep, alert and dreaming, life and death, creating an otherworldly space filled with love and hope.”

—Cynthia Wade, Academy Award winning film director

“A poignant, accessible, beautifully written book that provides a rare glimpse of what it is like to suddenly lose your husband of 30 years in a tragic car crash. And how to not only survive the loss, but grow meaningfully through the experience.”

—Alison Larkin, bestselling author of The English American