Overview

Sarah Carey's debut poetry collection, The Grief Committee Minutes, is a lyrical exploration of loss, memory, and environmental and human connections. This thoughtfully curated volume takes readers through the landscapes of grief, offering insights into how we process pain, honor lost people and places, and find strength to move forward. At the heart of Carey's work is a deep engagement with the natural world, particularly the flora and fauna of northern Florida, where she grew up. Birds feature prominently, serving as metaphors for freedom, fragility, and life's ephemeral nature. These avian images provide a through-line that connects the various themes of the book, from personal loss to broader societal concerns, mirroring the speaker's poetic record. Moving seamlessly between past and present, the poems in this collection often begin with contemporary observations before spiraling into memory. This creates a rich tapestry of experience, highlighting how our past informs our present and exploring grief's long-reaching effects on our perceptions and interactions. With a voice that speaks directly to the human experience, Carey's poems mirror our own lives. Whether delving into the complexities of parent-child relationships, the isolating effects of the pandemic, or the subtle shifts of aging, her work resonates universally, inviting readers to find solace in the recognition of their own experiences within her carefully chosen words. The poems in this collection tackle complex subjects like war, environmental degradation, and cultural memory loss with sensitivity and insight. The Grief Committee Minutes is an intimate portrait of individual sorrow and a broader meditation on collective grief, including the shared experience of watching familiar landscapes change. While the poems in this collection never shy away from the raw pain of grief, they also point us toward the transformative potential of loss. They suggest that even in the face of profound sorrow, we can deepen our empathy, strengthen our connections, and heighten our appreciation for life's fleeting joys, offering a glimmer of hope in the darkest of times. The Grief Committee Minutes is not just a collection of poems, but a carefully structured journey through the stages of grief, from the initial shock to the eventual healing and reintegration. Its thoughtful arrangement creates a sense of progression, while individual poems circle back to recurring themes and images, much like the cyclical nature of memory and loss, guiding the reader through a deeply engaging and introspective experience.

Full Product Details

9781955194372

Table of Contents

Reviews

"Praise for The Grief Committee Minutes How the past haunts us, even as life goes on. And how the birds-ah, the birds-match us, tapping and feeding and squabbling and, once in a while, showing us how to fly. Sarah Carey flies in this book-her dead mother on her back, the past in all its complications, yes, but fly she does. The poetry, ""the wing //my life careens on to its close."" A good read. -Alice Friman, On the Overnight Train: New and Selected Poems Sarah Carey's luminous new poems reckon with our beautiful and broken world with the intimacy and precision of a writer at her peak. Daughter of a dying mother and a threatened Earth, she grafts truths that root her and her readers in shared history, place-and the strength to rise like the pines and swallow-tails on these pages. ""Why rebuild?"" Carey asks in an electrifying hurricane poem. This collection holds the answers, and all that is dear. -Cynthia Barnett, Rain and The Sound of the Sea This remarkable debut resides in a liminal space, striding between natural and spiritual realms. Sarah Carey doesn't miss anything, not the blur of a peregrine wing nor the secrets of an ailing father. This book teems with life even as it looks death in the eye, never flinching. A wild, wonderful collection of poems. -Erica Wright, All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned In her stunning debut, Sarah Carey offers a yearning litany of familial love, spirituality, and the inevitable loss and grief that defines the human condition. Carey's tone is often curious, gentle, and accepting. ""No one knows the ways / we let each other go,"" she writes in ""The Beach House Offers an Elegy."" But in the end, her tight command of language convinces readers that perhaps it is she who controls the world around her rather than the other way around. -Jen Karetnick, Inheritance with a High Error Rate This thanatological collection thrills with beauty and its passing, with the ways the past is embedded in the present, and with the lives one attempts to rescue through memory. Its buoyant music dazzles and haunts. -Chelsea Dingman, Thaw and I, Divided"

"Praise for The Grief Committee Minutes How the past haunts us, even as life goes on. And how the birds-ah, the birds-match us, tapping and feeding and squabbling and, once in a while, showing us how to fly. Sarah Carey flies in this book-her dead mother on her back, the past in all its complications, yes, but fly she does. The poetry, ""the wing //my life careens on to its close."" A good read. -Alice Friman, On the Overnight Train: New and Selected Poems Sarah Carey's luminous new poems reckon with our beautiful and broken world with the intimacy and precision of a writer at her peak. Daughter of a dying mother and a threatened Earth, she grafts truths that root her and her readers in shared history, place-and the strength to rise like the pines and swallow-tails on these pages. ""Why rebuild?"" Carey asks in an electrifying hurricane poem. This collection holds the answers, and all that is dear. -Cynthia Barnett, Rain and The Sound of the Sea This remarkable debut resides in a liminal space, striding between natural and spiritual realms. Sarah Carey doesn't miss anything, not the blur of a peregrine wing nor the secrets of an ailing father. This book teems with life even as it looks death in the eye, never flinching. A wild, wonderful collection of poems. -Erica Wright, All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned In her stunning debut, Sarah Carey offers a yearning litany of familial love, spirituality, and the inevitable loss and grief that defines the human condition. Carey's tone is often curious, gentle, and accepting. ""No one knows the ways / we let each other go,"" she writes in ""The Beach House Offers an Elegy."" But in the end, her tight command of language convinces readers that perhaps it is she who controls the world around her rather than the other way around. -Jen Karetnick, Inheritance with a High Error Rate This thanatological collection thrills with beauty and its passing, with the ways the past is embedded in the present, and with the lives one attempts to rescue through memory. Its buoyant music dazzles and haunts. -Chelsea Dingman, Thaw and I, Divided How the past haunts us, even as life goes on. And how the birds-ah, the birds-match us, tapping and feeding and squabbling and, once in a while, showing us how to fly. Sarah Carey flies in this book-her dead mother on her back, the past in all its complications, yes, but fly she does. The poetry, ""the wing //my life careens on to its close."" A good read. -Alice Friman, On the Overnight Train: New and Selected Poems Sarah Carey's luminous new poems reckon with our beautiful and broken world with the intimacy and precision of a writer at her peak. Daughter of a dying mother and a threatened Earth, she grafts truths that root her and her readers in shared history, place-and the strength to rise like the pines and swallow-tails on these pages. ""Why rebuild?"" Carey asks in an electrifying hurricane poem. This collection holds the answers, and all that is dear. -Cynthia Barnett, Rain and The Sound of the Sea This remarkable debut resides in a liminal space, striding between natural and spiritual realms. Sarah Carey doesn't miss anything, not the blur of a peregrine wing nor the secrets of an ailing father. This book teems with life even as it looks death in the eye, never flinching. A wild, wonderful collection of poems. -Erica Wright, All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned In her stunning debut, Sarah Carey offers a yearning litany of familial love, spirituality, and the inevitable loss and grief that defines the human condition. Carey's tone is often curious, gentle, and accepting. ""No one knows the ways / we let each other go,"" she writes in ""The Beach House Offers an Elegy."" But in the end, her tight command of language convinces readers that perhaps it is she who controls the world around her rather than the other way around. -Jen Karetnick, Inheritance with a High Error Rate This thanatological collection thrills with beauty and its passing, with the ways the past is embedded in the present, and with the lives one attempts to rescue through memory. Its buoyant music dazzles and haunts. -Chelsea Dingman, Thaw and I, Divided"

Author Information

Sarah Carey is a North Carolina native who grew up in Florida and has spent most of her life there. She attended Duke University and Florida State University, where she received a master's degree in English with a creative writing concentration. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Gulf Coast, Five Points, Rattle, Florida Review, Atlanta Review, and elsewhere. Sarah is the author of two poetry chapbooks, including Accommodations, winner of the 2018 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award, (Concrete Wolf Poetry Series, 2019) and The Heart Contracts, (Finishing Line Press, 2016.) She has worked in journalism and public relations for her entire professional career, including over 30 years as director of communications for the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, and has amassed numerous honors and awards for her writing. She lives in Gainesville with her husband and a big black Lab.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available