Dear Ghosts,

Fourteen years after the publication of Moon Crossing Bridge, Tess Gallagher’s powerful elegies following the death of her husband, Raymond Carver, Dear Ghosts, 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.

Click here to hear Tess Gallagher read from Dear Ghosts, on Seattle's KUOW.

“It is impossible to read Tess Gallagher’s poems without being drawn into their mesmerizing rhythms and convinced of the rightness of her intense yet unforced images.” —Joyce Carol Oates

“Never morose, sentimental, or embittered, Gallagher opens herself to the intricate miseries and mysteries of love in poems that are worthy of the Pulitzer Prize.” —The Seattle Times

“Gallagher’s poems resound with exquisite beauty and remind me once more how it is not subject but its rendering that redeems and uplifts.” —The Boston Globe