“Unfolding the map of my unknowing,” a line from Sandra Lindow’s lovely elegiac collection, Chasing Wild Grief, provides an entry point as any to the heartfelt, at times heart-wrenching, but ultimately heartening poems in a book that remembers, mourns, and richly illuminates the life of a beloved companion. Although highly detailed and rich in natural imagery, the tone and language of these poems carry us across the landscape of “wild grief,” prompting readers to recall the inevitable partings from their own lives, accomplishing this in a variety of forms and language that finally leave us more celebratory than sorrowful. These poems, like all good elegies, not only navigate the various modes of grief, but ultimately accomplish what the poetry of memory at its best seeks to accomplish, transforming grief into gratitude.
—Max Garland, former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin and author of The Word We Used for It
