Lullaby for the Grieving

A Shelf Awareness 2025 Best Bookof the YearSouthern Literary Review's Best Poetry Book of the YearMaya Angelou Book Award 2025, Poetry, longlistWith previous work hailed by the New York Times as unflinching and piercing, Ashley M. JonessLullaby for the Grievingis her most personal collection to date.In her fourth poetry collection, Jones studies the multifaceted nature of grief: the personal grief of losing her father, and the political grief tied to Black Southern identity. How does one find a path through the deep sorrow of losing a parent? What wonders of Blackness have to be suppressed to make way for progress?Journeying through landscapes of Alabama, the Middle Passage and Underground Railroad, interior spaces of loss and love, and her fathers garden, Jones constructs both an elegy for her father and a celebration of the sacred exuberance and audacity of life. Featuring poems from her tenure as Alabamas first Black and youngest Poet Laureate,Lullaby for the Grievingfinds calm in unimaginable storms and attempts to listen for the sounds of healing.