Dear Ghosts,

“[A] rich, striking, new collection…addressed to ghosts of various kinds and degrees of intimacy.”—Washington Post Book World, Poet’s Choice

“A rich and expansive body of work that takes the reader on a confessional journey through suffering, loss, grief and, ultimately, hope.”—The Guardian

“Gallagher, a cherished poet and short story writer, evokes the power of the unseen as well as the seen with breathtaking clarity, creating metaphors so surprising, radiant, and apt that the world seems to expand in their wake.”—✩Booklist

Fourteen years after the publication of Moon Crossing Bridge, Tess Gallagher’s powerful elegies following the death of her husband, Raymond Carver, DEAR GHOSTS, (the comma is intentional) is the long-awaited return of Gallagher’s unequivocal voice. In this new collection, her seventh, the ghosts of the past are conjured and communed with as part of the poet’s present day: the deceased beloved, the father long dead, the victims of holocaust and war. With these spirits beside her, Gallagher confronts her own illness and mortality and celebrates new love and friendship in these spare lyrics and sprawling narratives, each punctuated by her feisty resilience and signature grace. Here is the original new work by one of America’s most accomplished poets.

“Dear Ghosts, is a generous, expansive book which leaps with time and over time-zones, the strong threads of those loved in the present, and those carried from the past, running through its fabric. What a compendium it is! Like a magic flying carpet, it dips in and out of the past of America, an America which existed before our generations.”—Ciaran Carson