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The poetry of suicide

Lessons in grief from the lives and deaths of poets
By J. T. Welsch
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Brief Description
A profound exploration of the connection between poetry and suicide. 'Suicides have a special language', Anne Sexton wrote in her 1964 poem 'Wanting to Die'. But is it a language we can learn to read? In The poetry of suicide, J. T. Welsch interweaves stories of... Read More
Format: Hardback
$7999

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Interweaving stories of poets who took their own lives with the long history of suicide in his own family, J. T. Welsch reveals how poetry can help us to understand and come to terms with these difficult deaths.

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A profound exploration of the connection between poetry and suicide.

'Suicides have a special language', Anne Sexton wrote in her 1964 poem 'Wanting to Die'. But is it a language we can learn to read?

In The poetry of suicide, J. T. Welsch interweaves stories of poets who took their own lives with the long history of suicide in his own family, searching for a new way of understanding these difficult deaths. Beginning with Hamlet's 'To be or not to be?', he delves into the work of Dante, Sylvia Plath, Vladimir Mayakovsky and others, asking what it can teach us about suicide's messy reality.

Suicide is more like poetry than we realise, Welsch argues. Both are filled with ambiguities, contradictions and unknowable intentions. Both demand and resist interpretation. Recovering the personal dimension often lost in our medicalised public discourse, Welsch finds practical ways of confronting suicide's poem-like difficulties.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781526191991

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 21 April 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Manchester University Press

Illustration: 1 black & white illustration

Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 22.0mm

Width: 140.0mm

Height: 216.0mm

Weight: 451g

Pages: 304

Collections

Arts & Culture Education & Reference Grief & Loss Health & Wellness J. T. Welsch Non-Fiction Self-Help & Personal Development

About the Author

J. T. Welsch is a writer and academic born in the US and based in the UK, where he teaches at the University of York. He is the author of several books of and about poetry, including Orchids (2010), The Hell Creek Anthology (2015) and The Selling and Self-Regulation of Contemporary Poetry (2020). He also edited the anthology of migrant poetry Wretched Strangers (2018) with gnes Lehczky. His writing has appeared in Poetry Review, Boston Review and the Guardian.

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