$14.99
Diane Alters’ profound encounter with loss—the murder of her son—creates a strange fecundity. How do we carry what is unbearable, nurturing grief until, through endless labor, it gives birth to something else? These poems groan with creation, opening to compassion on all the disappeared of the world, all the Trayvon Martins, all the school children killed in endless shootings. And still, this is a work of great nakedness in which the poet bares and bears herself in witness to the life of her radiant son. “If I still had faith, would I be pain-free?” she asks. No, the pain will remain, but these poems effect a transposition, a birth, that makes pain generative, honest—an intimacy that honors and accompanies the loss.
–E L I Z A B E T H R O B I N S O N , author of On Ghosts
What does it mean to write at the aperture of grief? Diane Alters’ Breath, Suspended answers just this in her gorgeously crafted elegy that captures the life and loss of her son, Mando. These poems, which bridge the gap between the United States and Mexico City, show us how small and how tremendously large the distance between two bodies can be. The aperture, the space through which light passes, becomes the heart of these gut-wrenching poems. Her work gathers us on the brink between stasis and motion, between wound and breath. As Alters writes, “Vallejo gave me / an almost indecipherable word: empozarse, / a verb that puts water in an eye / and leaves it just under the rim.”
–A N D R E A R E X I L I U S , author of Sister Urn
In the latest episode of the Short Fuse podcast, poets Edward Hirsch and Diane Alters talk with host Elizabeth Howard about poetry and grief and how they used poetry to work through the death of their sons. Diane Alters’ chapbook, Breath, Suspended, was published in Spring 2022 by Finishing Line Press.
https://theshortfusepodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/breath-suspended
Breath, Suspended
by Diane Alters
$14.99, paper
978-1-64662-797-4
2022
D I A N E A L T E R S is a graduate of the Poetry Book Project at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver. A former journalist, she teaches college in Colorado. Her poems, which often emerge at the intersection of culture and language, have appeared or are forthcoming in Calyx, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, The New York Quarterly and Pilgrimage Magazine.
Harriet Stratton (verified owner) –
At an archeological excavation in Peru, the poet “digs for answers” after the murder of her 22 year old son on a deserted Mexico City street. In plain and perfect English she interrogates “the hurt that pulls live tissue from the bone” and gives us a sort of poetic guidebook to bearing unbearable loss. And for this we thank her.
Kirsten Morgan (verified owner) –
In search of a perfect vessel to hold the grief of losing an only child, Diane Alters has chosen poetry, the genre that can best capture such complexity. Her tribute is a finely-wrought collection that gathers the essence of a young man who shared his heart with everyone he met on a brief excursion through a fascinating life. The parents’ grief and gradual mending as they witness their son’s continuing impact on the world create a poetic tapestry of heartache, wisdom and deep gratitude. I can’t recommend this book highly enough, nor keep from returning again and again to its gripping poems.
hilary abramson (verified owner) –
You don’t even have to love poetry to hold “Breath, Suspended” to your heart before you read it for the second time. It is enough that writer Diane Alters selects the right words in two languages to describe reality seen and unseen in a way that goes beyond a single genre. With the detachment of a journalist and attachment of a mother, she delivers the unforgettable story of the unsolved murder of her son. Her searing reflections span borders and time. She moves from “memory aspirated” to “hurt inhaled” without turning away from anything. Neither do you. Put this book in a permanent place so that you’ll know where to find it when you need it.