A book-length sequence of poems that dares to affirm the vast variety of emotional colors in loss and rejuvenation.

After her husband’s death, Molly Peacock realized she was not living the received idea of a widow’s mauve existence but instead was experiencing life in all colors. These gorgeous poems—joyful, furious, mournful, bewildered, sexy, devastated, whimsical and above all, moving—composed in sonnet sequences and in open forms, designed in four movements (After, Before, When, and Afterglow)—illuminate both the role of the caregiver and the crystalline emotions one can experience after the death of a cherished partner. With her characteristic virtuosity, her fearless willingness to confront even the most difficult emotions, and always with buoyancy and zest, Peacock charts widowhood in the twenty-first century.

From “Touched:”
After you died, I felt you next to me,
and over months you entered gradually
into that lake and disappeared. Not gone,
but so internalized you’re not next to me.

Molly Peacock is the author of six volumes of poetry, including The Second Blush (McClelland & Stewart, 2009) and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems (W.W. Norton); a memoir, Paradise, Piece by Piece; and a one-woman show in poems, “The Shimmering Verge” produced by Louise Fagan Productions (London, Ontario). She has been series editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English since 2007, as well as a contributing editor of the Literary Review of Canada and a faculty mentor at the Spalding MFA Program. Her poetry, published in leading literary journals in North America and the UK, is widely anthologized. Her latest work of nonfiction is The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work at 72 (McClelland & Stewart, 2010).

Molly Peacock's profile page

In The Widow’s Crayon Box, Molly Peacock harnesses the full power of grief, rage, and love in bristling sonnet crowns and lyrical poems. . . . Tenderness and hope [live] in these poems alongside verdant dreams of apples and kaleidoscopic colors, finally helping us imagine an end to suffering for ourselves and our beloveds. This is, indeed, a breathtaking book! —Hadara Bar-Nadav, author of The Animal Is Chemical

[The Widow’s Crayon Box] bears ample witness to [Molly Peacock’s] wit and gusto, her sensuousness and curiosity, and her courage . . . Her poetic artistry, honed over the course of her distinguished career, enables her to find beauty and zest even in the most forbidding places—and having found them, to offer them to us. —Rachel Hadas, author of Ghost Guest

Molly Peacock has conjured touch, taste, smell, ghosts, anger, and laughter into a grown-up coloring book. Her Widow’s Crayon Box will retune your eyes and ears to grief. It did mine. I congratulate Molly on her hard-won book, which proves, once again, what poetry in the right poets’ heart and hands is good for. —Cornelius Eady, author of The War Against the Obvious

Bittersweet pleasures. . . . [W]hatever comes to mind, . . . pull up a chair, ‘listen, question, watch things heal.’—Nuar Alsadir, O, the Oprah Magazine

Peacock roars to life . . . with formal verse that explained human pain and loss in monumental terms. . . . [She] straddles the Canadian-American divide and . . . serves as poetic inspiration . . . for poets of both nations.—Shane Neilson, Poetry Foundation