The Grief You Can Swallow and the Rage You Can't

"The Grief You Can Swallow and the Rage You Can't" investigates the evolution of elegiac form through a collection of interconnected poems exploring contemporary loss. The manuscript develops new poetic architectures for expressing grief, employing multiple formal strategies including clinical studies, psalms, concrete poetry, and variant realities. Through the lens of personal loss the collection examines how traditional elegiac containers strain to hold modern experiences of mourning. The work engages with established forms like the ghazal and tanka while simultaneously developing experimental structures that challenge conventional approaches to grief poetry. Central to the manuscript is the metaphor of mutation, both in its exploration of cancer and in its formal innovations. The collection's structure moves from a communal invitation to a private dreamscape, ultimately ending without punctuation to suggest grief's resistance to closure. By integrating clinical language with raw emotion, developing rage as a distinct poetic dialect, and creating hybrid forms that bridge presence and absence, the manuscript proposes new possibilities for elegiac expression in the contemporary era.