Tag Archives: Pulitzer Prize

“Memorial to D.C.” by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Poem to a lost friend evokes love and longing

There is an old joke among writers that nobody likes to write but everybody likes to have written. Nothing could have been further from the truth for poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay (1889-1950). Her love affair with words began … Continue reading

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Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

A Pulitzer Prize-winning novel on aging, Christianity and the mysteries of life and death

There’s too much to praise in Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead. Such luminous beauty and spiritual verve, as always sought but rarely seen, rewards the reader who opens this story based in Gilead, a small, fictional town in Iowa. A novel … Continue reading

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Tinkers, by Paul Harding

The Pulitzer Prize winning novel about life, death, and memory

It begins, “George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died.”  From there, we enter a beautiful, chaotic world that spans generations.  Paul Harding creates a web of characters that compliment one another while illuminating life’s most profound … Continue reading

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“Early Elegy: Headmistress” by Claudia Emerson

Claudia Emerson unites comedy and tragedy in her short poem to form one perfect whole

There are what could be termed “better” poems about death by Claudia Emerson, but “Early Elegy: Headmistress” intrigued me so much when I first read it that I chose to write about it this week. The poem is short, only eight … Continue reading

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“The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz

Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel manages to put death in a beautiful light

  ***This post contains spoilers***   As its title suggests, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao tells the life story of a young individual, up until his death. In fact, Junot Diaz‘s 2007 novel contains many deaths, but I’m going … Continue reading

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