Loss is a tricky thing, but grief can be even trickier. The same can be said for finding love, whether it be familial, fraternal, or romantic, and keeping it. The poems that make up this thesis, Our Sad Ecstatic Mouths, deal primarily with these ever present topics: loss and the grief that arises in the aftermath, and love and how to maintain it. Principally autobiographical, much of the work revolves around my own interpersonal relationships and the death of my brother, Gordon Parody, as well as others I have loved and lost and the impact these loses have had on my life since. Denise Levertov wrote, "Grief is a hole you walk around in the daytime and at night you fall into it," and I believe the same can be said for love. These poems are my attempt at actualizing, through poetic translation, this walking, this falling, and the choices (both good and bad) one makes when struggling to find footing in the process of being alive, the process of loving and losing. While sadness, sex and drug abuse find their place in much of this work, I believe that, overall, the ecstatic nature of a life being lived, shared, and reflected upon shines through. At the heart of every poem in this collection you will find love - a compassionate fervor for the world that oftentimes, when allowed to roam un-reigned, borders on frenzy, but always, somehow, finds its way back home in the end
