This is a book full of poems about my past, and my present life. This book is full of love, laughter, and pain. I hope the material that I have presented will touch people around the world. I also hope that many will be able to relate to the material as well. One Love.

The poems in this book were written between the ages of 14 and 22 years old. This book started during my youth when I was sentenced to Juvenile Life with the Department of Juvenile Justice system. Long nights, bad dreams and a temper that caused bad judgment, I was encouraged to write what I feel. It is the poems in this book that helped me through so much and allowed me to express what I feel in an exceptional way. I never knew writing my first poem would be the beginning of a book that told a different part of my life through each page. So I wrote this book for those who don't understand me, for others who are misunderstood, and to express what I have felt through the toughest times a teenager can imagine. This book is to show lost souls can be found and those with no soul still have a chance.

From the darkest recesses of desperate loneliness, poetry has always had the ability to lift even the most suffering of hearts. Tempered thoughts, structured with the right words woven together with a caring heart and artistic hand, can give a troubled soul the eyes to see and the desire to appreciate the beauty of life once again. In Poetry for the Lost Soul, author Jeffrey A. Carlton experiences a rebirth into the world through his work. From the brink of death, the author rediscovers life and invites the reader to join him in his journey. Stemming from the loss of his entire family and subsequent questioning of his own self-worth, Mr. Carlton uses poetry to come to terms with himself, with his God, and with the imminence of death. Through these poems he fights to conquer the evils that are trying to envelop him, enabling him to pull himself from death’s doorstep through his writing.

The bestselling poet Malcolm Guite chooses forty poems from across the centuries that express the universal experience of loss and reflects on them in order to draw out the comfort, understanding and hope they offer. Some of the poems will be familiar, many will be new, but together they provide a sure companion for the journey across difficult terrain. Some of Malcolm’s own poetry is included, written out of his work as a priest with the dying and the bereaved and giving to the volume a powerful authenticity. The choice of forty poems is significant and reflects an ancient practice still observed in some European and Middle Eastern societies of taking extra-special care of a bereaved person in the forty days following a death – our word quarantine come from this. They explore the nature and the risk of love, the pain of letting go and look toward glimpses of resurrection.

From the depths of sorrow following the sudden death of her closest female mentor, Brenda Hillman asks anguished questions in this book of poems about separation, spiritual transcendence, and the difference between life and death. Both personal and philosophical, her work can be read as a spirit-guide for those mourning the loss of a loved one and as a series of fundamental ponderings on the inevitability of death and separation. At first refusing to let go, desperate to feel the presence of her friend, the poet seeks solace in a belief in the spirit world. But life, not death, becomes the issue when she begins to see physical existence as "an interruption" that preoccupies us with shapes and borders. "Shape makes life too small," she realizes. Comfort at last comes in the idea of "reverse seeing": that even if she cannot see forward into the spirit world, her friend can see "backward into this world" and be with her. Death Tractates is the companion volume to a philosophical poetic work entitles Bright Existence, which Hillman was in the midst of writing when her friend died. Published by Wesleyan University Press in 1993, it shares many of the same Gnostic themes and sources.

Here he is, husband and father, scruffy romantic, a shambolic scholar--a man adrift in the wake of his wife's sudden, accidental death. And there are his two sons who like him struggle in their London apartment to face the unbearable sadness that has engulfed them. The father imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness, while the boys wander, savage and unsupervised. In this moment of violent despair they are visited by Crow--antagonist, trickster, goad, protector, therapist, and babysitter. This self-described "sentimental bird," at once wild and tender, who "finds humans dull except in grief," threatens to stay with the wounded family until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and the pain of loss lessens with the balm of memories, Crow's efforts are rewarded and the little unit of three begins to recover: Dad resumes his book about the poet Ted Hughes; the boys get on with it, grow up. Part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's extraordinary debut combines compassion and bravura style to dazzling effect. Full of angular wit and profound truths, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers is a startlingly original and haunting debut by a significant new talent.

Long beloved for her artful prayers, best-selling author Joyce Rupp presents an entirely new collection of 106 meditative poems on a theme she has woven masterfully through all her writing--the pain of loss and the hope of restoration. My Soul Feels Lean is a journey into compassion. Drawing on insights from her Christian faith and a lifelong connection to the Iowa farmland of her birth, Joyce Rupp explores themes of loss and restoration in this luminous collection of poems. Returning to an undercurrent in her work since the publication of Praying Our Goodbyes, Rupp offers here sensitive insights on the pain of loss and the hope she finds when she is willing to let go and trust. Rupp's leanness of soul has taught her to observe and celebrate the harsh beauty of life. "Loss has encouraged me to find joy and meaning here instead of pining for it elsewhere," she writes, "to live more simply and be content with less, to appreciate more fully what I now have."

Pet Loss Poems: To Heal Your Heart and Soul is a collection of forty-one poems written for those who are suffering pet loss grief and need a soft place to land. They reveal the emotions of normal pet loss grief and the passage that you may be experiencing.

First published in 1996. This new book gives voice to an emerging consensus among bereavement scholars that our understanding of the grief process needs to be expanded. The dominant 20th century model holds that the function of grief and mourning is to cut bonds with the deceased, thereby freeing the survivor to reinvest in new relationships in the present. Pathological grief has been defined in terms of holding on to the deceased. Close examination reveals that this model is based more on the cultural values of modernity than on any substantial data of what people actually do. Presenting data from several populations, 22 authors - among the most respected in their fields - demonstrate that the health resolution of grief enables one to maintain a continuing bond with the deceased. Despite cultural disapproval and lack of validation by professionals, survivors find places for the dead in their on-going lives and even in their communities. Such bonds are not denial: the deceased can provide resources for enriched functioning in the present. Chapters examine widows and widowers, bereaved children, parents and siblings, and a population previously excluded from bereavement research: adoptees and their birth parents. Bereavement in Japanese culture is also discussed, as are meanings and implications of this new model of grief. Opening new areas of research and scholarly dialogue, this work provides the basis for significant developments in clinical practice in the field.

We live in a society where people are broken and discouraged, where people are at a loss for where to go or who to turn to. We live in a society where people are depressed and oppressed and feel as if there is no way out. Rhythms for the Soul is a book to let a society of people know God can restore brokenness, that His word is encouragement. It's a book to ensure people that Jesus came to recover all that was lost. Rhythms for the Soul is a book filled with words to heal the hurting spirit, soul, body, and mind. It was created to give hope to the hopeless and set the oppressed free. It's a book designed to show the depressed the bright light at the end of a seemingly long dark tunnel. Rhythms for the Soul is medicine for everything that hurts, if one chooses to partake of it.