Why Poetry Speaks to Grief and Loss—and Opens the Door to Healing

When loss rips through our lives, we often search for words comprehensive enough to encapsulate what we feel.

A lot of times, the cliché, positivity-oriented language of condolence cards—“They’re in a better place,” “Time heals all wounds,” “You’ll get through this”—doesn’t do our grief justice, and only deepens the ache. Even more therapeutic phrases that we pick up on a counselor’s couch or from a self-help book, while helpful, can feel more clinical than soul-resonant.

But poetry? Poetry does something different.

As poet William Bortz shared on my podcast Grief Grower in the lead-up to Mother’s Day, “Poetry does not give people answers. Poetry gives you questions, which I think in a lot of ways is better than receiving an answer.” And in the aftermath of loss, that may be exactly what we need.

Let’s explore why poetry resonates so deeply with grieving hearts—and how reading and writing poetry can help you open the door to healing, even in the wake of profound loss.

Poetry Doesn't Fix Grief; It Companions It

Unlike self-help books or therapeutic how-tos, poetry doesn’t come with an instruction manual or an 8-step plan. It refuses to tidy grief into bullet points. Instead, it sits beside you. It lets the silence and uncertainty exist without needing you—or your grief—to be different.

Poetry acknowledges the messy, unfinished-ness of grief and speaks about loss in fragments, metaphors, and spaces between lines.

As William described in our conversation, his grief—especially childhood grief—was less about grieving specific people and more about “grieving inanimate, invisible things like hope, stability, and certainty.”

His poem “Outcomes” from The Grief We’re Given captures this beautifully:

“I am scared of outcomes
terrified that they happen
whether I will them

to or not...

love of all things is a haunting. how do you
keep exuberant things

close to you without them
becoming a shadow.”

Poetry gives shape to the formless. But it’s not always a clear, perfect shape. It’s an outline, a guesstimate, a piece of grief-work-in-progress. Unlike much of society, poetry is a place where things are allowed to be more abstract and fuzzy than concrete and defined.

Poetry Is Great for Grief Brain

There’s also science behind why poetry can be healing. When we’re grieving, our prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that makes rational decisions) is often overloaded or offline. Poetry—through metaphor, emotion, and memory—activates brain regions that bypass logic and go straight to feeling. fMRI studies confirm that poetry lights up the brain like music or a meaningful conversation.

This may be why so many grieving people find poetry helpful: it allows them to feel when they can’t yet think.

In other words, poetry allows us to feel our way through grief when thinking doesn’t work.

And because poems are often short, they meet us where our attention span exists during grief—in short bits and pieces. Unlike novels and nonfiction books, books of poetry are easy to pick up and put down when you can’t focus for very long.

After I experienced a near-death seizure in 2021, I read Mary Oliver’s Devotions, a collection of poems about nature, beauty, death, and animals. Contemplating just one or two poems a night helped me feel like I was accomplishing something as my brain was literally coming back online. I appreciated how just a few words both sparked my imagination and settled my nervous system.

I didn’t need a plan or a framework to process my bizarre medical event. I needed permission to ponder, to linger amidst all the questions I had about what happened—and what was next. Poetry was great for that.

How to Grieve Through Poetry: Writing, Reading, and Reflecting

You don’t have to be a “word nerd” to turn to poetry in grief. Whether you’re reading someone else’s poems or scribbling your own creations into a notebook, poetry offers multiple entry points for grief expression.

Here are a few accessible ways to engage with poetry during loss:

• Read poems aloud—alone or with a friend—that resonate with your experience (see recommended poets below)

• Write your own grief poems using repetition, metaphor, or the questions you have about loss; skip structure if that feels easier

• Use a single line of poetry as a journaling prompt

• Try grief haiku, a simple three-line poem that explores a single moment or theme of your grief

• Pick up three or four random books of poetry from your local bookstore or library and see which poets, styles, and topics speak the most to you

• Try “blackout poetry” where you take a page out of a magazine, newspaper, or book (that you own) and use a black marker to cross out words until you have just a few visible words remaining to make a poem

• Follow grief poets on social media (@morganharpernichols is a great gentle poet to start with)

Four Poets to Read When You’re Grieving

In our conversation, William mentioned two poets whose work has deeply informed his own healing—and who are excellent companions for anyone grieving:

Hanif Abdurraqib

“God, I have touched the living face of a person I love.
With the same hands, I have touched the dying face of someone I love, and none of that seems fair.”

Hanif’s work weaves together music, memory, and mourning. Start with his books A Fortune for Your Disaster or They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us.

Kaveh Akbar

In Calling a Wolf a Wolf, Akbar writes:

“Thinking if I had a name, it would have a solution.
Thinking if I called a wolf a wolf, I might dull its fangs.”

William shared that this line shifted something for him—showing how naming grief doesn’t erase it, but helps us be in relationship with it. Akbar’s poetry is unflinching and mystical, especially around addiction, alcoholism, loss, and the sacred ache of being human.

Two of my favorite poets include:

Angela E. Morris

“Grief, for me, has been the ultimate
undoing—a complete rebuild—a pile of
rubble to sort through.

The arrival of insurmountable pain has
connected me to the world’s aches more
vividly.

Grief has broken me down and woven me
with humans who dance between two worlds,
one before their loved one’s death and one
after.”

I’m not sure Angela would call herself a poet, but her work certainly reads like poetry. Her book Love Notes to Grievers is a beautiful pocket guide of short affirmations and notes for life after loss.

Mary Oliver

“To live in this world 
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.”

Mary Oliver is quite literally a down-to-earth poet, writing often about nature, the body, and the fleeting preciousness of everything that’s alive. As I previously mentioned, her book of collected poems, Devotions, is a great one for grief brain.

Why Poetry Works When Other Language Fails

So often in grief, our first instinct is to look for logic. We want to name what’s happening, define it, understand it, and ultimately, manage it. But grief is not logical. And it’s most certainly not linear.

Poetry, like grief, resists tidy categories.

It’s honest. It’s messy. It’s a little bit weird sometimes. And it allows you to sit in that uncomfortable in-between space grief so often leaves you in.

Poetry doesn’t require certainty or answers from you. And that can be a real blessing when both are in short supply.

In some ways, poetry—whether you’re reading or writing it—can be like the friend who “just sits with you” after loss. It asks nothing of you and needs nothing of you. It is simply present during a really hard time.

Closing Thoughts: Grief Is a Wild Creature; Poetry Is a Soft Place to Sit Beside It

In my first book Permission to Grieve, I wrote about grief as a metaphorical wolf trapped in the basement of my life. I feared it would devour me. What I learned is that it only wanted to be seen, named, and welcomed.

Poetry gives us the tools to do just that.

It’s not about solving grief. It’s about sitting next to it and saying, “I see you.”

Whether you’re grieving a person, a relationship, a dream, a sense of stability, or a future that will never come to pass—poetry offers a gentle way to coexist with it.

And in that meeting place, a door to healing quietly opens.

Looking for more ways to connect words and grief? Check out my book Your Grief, Your Way, a daily nonreligious devotional for life after loss.

Each day contains a short 300-word passage (perfect for grief brain!) including either a quote or a short exercise for navigating grief. There are even some exercises related to poetry, writing, and journaling after loss. You can pick and choose the entries that feel best to you or read through day-by-day for a full year of small-but-powerful grief support. Find it here.

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