{"product_id":"breath-taking","title":"Breath Taking","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn unflinching and tender recollection of illness, death, and grief, sensitively exploring the dynamic between the burden of care and the burden of dying. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCarolyn Smart's latest poetry collection offers a striking meditation on the death of her partner of nearly forty years. Structured in five distinct parts, this deeply moving book unfolds like a tragedy--each section like an act in a play, the individual poems key scenes in a shared life coming to an end.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe language in \u003ci\u003eBreath Taking\u003c\/i\u003e is direct and exacting, with colloquial phrases that animate and complicate the emotional pressure of the work itself. Familiar references are scattered throughout--Gould Lake, Road 38--not as a device, but as indications of the everyday world that love, pain, and death inhabit.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntimate and exhaustive, this generous document doesn't lean on a belief in God or the afterlife, nor does nature's continuity offer an uncomplicated source of comfort. Instead, what is revealed is the unvarnished reality of love and loss--the arduous responsibilities, the fragile attempts at recovery, the wishful thinking that what is gone will one day return. \u003ci\u003eBreath Taking\u003c\/i\u003e is a profound, vital reflection on the end of a life, and on those who go on living.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Carolyn Smart","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44835469721642,"sku":"9781771669863","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/imageloader_4d164523-a556-4e91-8832-cb70dcc3ea97.jpg?v=1789321123","url":"https:\/\/thepoetryshop.com\/products\/breath-taking","provider":"The Poetry Shop LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}