Exculpatory Lilies: Poems

If Grief is the Willingness to be claimed by a story bigger than ourselves, Susan Musgrave writes, "in that/tender wavering, I let grief in"-her response to the death of her partner, Stephen Reid, in 2018. Following this traumatic loss, in September 2021, their daughter, Sophie, died of an accidental overdose after a twenty-year struggle with addiction. But to say Exculpatory Lilies is solely about grief would be to miss the whole nature of Musgrave's voice and sensibility. Throughout this ...