In the past four years, the overall suicide rate in the US has been at a historical high, according to CDC statistics, and though the suicide mortality rate is higher in males, studies over the last 15 years show a higher percentage of ideation or failed attempts in women, or “when mortality and morbidity of suicide are considered, females contribute far more to the burden”. After personally experiencing three of the four leading suicide risk precipitators in women, I turned to the literary community to find that women are not only a “burden” to the financial intricacies of the US mental healthcare system failing us, but also the light, the saviors, the caregivers. The following is a list of poetry collections I’ve saved through two major housing changes since 2021, written by women who make me feel seen, less ashamed, and, most importantly, less alone.

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Where the Water Begins by Kimberly Casey

For the woman who doesn’t know where to start, but desperately wants to start somewhere. This collection speaks of beginnings and the many meanings they have. As the speaker of these pieces sets off in search of herself by trying to leave behind relationships or addiction issues, she comes to realize, with every poem, that there are no new beginnings without an understanding and acceptance of our own personal beginnings as humans: “I want to forget the funerals / but I don’t want to forget the people we buried.” I love how the speaker of this collection is openly flawed, she tries and fails, and then tries again in ways that feel easily relatable like making hot sauce to stay busy, running to keep moving, but with every poem there is an acceptance of vulnerability as a sign of strength.

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Permit Me to Write My Own Ending by Rebecca Faulkner

For the woman ready to reclaim her own narrative. This book takes a look at all inter-personal dynamics as partnerships, from marriage to mere friendship, or even motherhood, and in doing so, it reveals the speaker’s role in each of these dynamics as a responsibility. The poems dive into the intertwined natures of control and responsibility under circumstances that may seem uncontrollable. From witnessing a friend commit suicide, to the out-of-body experience of non-consensual sex, to the deep-in-the-body experience of giving birth – the speaker reclaims her power by taking responsibility for the things she takes out of each event, showing the reader how when we can’t control the beginnings, we can certainly shape what we bring into our endings.

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Aching for the Amen by Dannielle E. Carr

For the woman who does believe in the power of prayer over grief. Following the speaker’s journey as she cares for her husband terminally ill with cancer all the way to his death and funeral, this unique long poem shows us, beyond the speaker’s relationship with her husband, her relationship with God. Marked with all the stages of grief in an almost biblical way, like stations of the cross, the narrative sees the speaker come to the brink of challenging her faith, while also standing in her faith, unwavering: “my soul can take it / god knows.” One of the few books I’ve ever read that has brought me closer to truly believing.

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Only as the Day Is Long by Dorianne Laux

For the woman who has lived through enough to resign herself to the nature of things as they truly are. This collection approaches the female condition with an undeniably mature voice, a testament to Laux’s extended history with the poetic craft. I always find myself reading her work with a mix of awe and jealousy, and I’ve come to find that the jealousy is not over her skill as a poet, but over the way she seems to approach life with such ease and magic, as evidenced by poems like Life Is Beautiful where a fly becomes a “household angel.” And of course, the collection includes one of my favorite poems of all time – Antilamentation

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Lamp of the Body by Maggie Smith

For the woman who wants to keep going. I know many readers will know Maggie Smith for her poetry collections that came after this one, but I’m choosing this one, her first, for a reason. Published when Smith was 27, I find this collection to embody the less talked-about young-life crisis. After following the expectations of an academic path via BA and MFA programs, 27 is give-or-take the age a young person comes to end of the socially-prescribed formula and has to take responsibility for the next step. These poems are looking to illuminate the path by searching for a metaphorical light in the speaker’s body and self, as the speaker tries on different personas, biblical and otherwise, asking horoscopes and divination for answers, both lost and determined to keep going.

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She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo

For the woman awake to knowing that womanhood is a network. Harjo’s poems in this collection are the language of lore, telling the reader about the way women spread the mycelium of their nature between their ancestors and their descendants. By acknowledging these connections, womanhood becomes everything from sisterhood to motherhood and life is suddenly infused with mysticism and revelatory symbols. A powerful poem that fully illustrates my take on the collection – The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor Window

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Mother/Land by Ananda Lima

For the woman stuck between two worlds. Not only an immigrant voice speaking between birth country and adoptive country, Lima is a voice speaking between being mother and being daughter. Throughout the collection, the speaker seeks balance while exploring the ways identity is both the things we’re born into as well as the things we chose to shape ourselves with. Regardless of the author’s immigrant background, this book will strike a chord with anyone who’s left home in search of a home, and particularly with women who become home for their children and through that manage to bridge their own mother-daughter divide.

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quilting by Lucille Clifton

For the woman learning to live alone inside her body. Even though Two-headed Woman is hailed as one of Clifton’s most notable poetic achievements, I picked quilting because this collection came three years after the death of her husband. The speaker of this collection is a woman learning to define herself outside of a relationship with another. For anyone who has lost a long-term, live-in partner as an adult, by death, divorce, or any kind of separation, you will know the identity crisis I’m talking about. As women, we’re socialized to be someone’s wife, someone’s daughter, someone’s mother, always in relation to someone else. Losing that sense of definition can be disorienting and dreadful, yet Clifton manages to quilt herself together, going back to biblical women, to her immediate ancestors, going inside her own body as an act of ascension with odes to her uterus or her last period. Newly-singled mature woman, this collection can help you locate parts of yourself until you start to make sense again.

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view with a grain of sand by Wisława Szymborska

For the woman who looks for miracles in all the small things. These are 100 poems exploring the unexpected tenderness of everything we overlook as we go through the motions of life. It’s not the kind of book that can be read breathlessly cover-to-cover, but I can certainly leaf through it daily and land on a piece that makes me appreciate whatever the most frustrating aspect of that day may be. It’s not easy to explain the deep sense of pure poetry that permeates this book, from knocking on the door of a rock to be let in, metaphorically or not, the reader can decide, to realizing how “I owe so much / to those I don’t love” or the bleak beauty of superficial interactions – An Unexpected Meeting

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Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson

For the woman who weaponizes her crazy against the world that made her crazy. The brilliance of this collection rests in the way the speaker owns the utter emotional chaos they’re experiencing. The themes approached range from mental health struggles and queer love struggles, to current event struggles, but the consistent element throughout is the speaker’s voice, coming through loud, yet steady and secure, no doubt a testament to Gibson’s background as a spoken word artist. The language is so precise that there’s no need to raise the voice, but nonetheless I find my inner reader getting breathless and screaming some of these lines inside my head, knowing that the world we live in consistently renders sanity invalid in any empathy-endowed human:

“Of the twenty children murdered at Sandy Hook,

None of them needed an ambulance.

That’s how dead they were.

That’s how well the Second Amendment works.”

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Now We’re Getting Somewhere by

Kim Addonizio

For the woman who has given her last fuck. Gorgeous and unhinged is how I want to describe this collection, with an unapologetically feral speaker, the kind of friend that calls you on your bullshit, but brings a jug of wine to your pity party, Louise holding up the gun, Courtney Love belting out Doll Parts. Addonizio’s poems here remind me of all the women who have ever told me and shown me how coming into their power meant caring less and less about appearing offensive to the norm. Absolute favorite of this book – To the Woman Crying Uncontrollably in the Next Stall

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Lucky Wreck by Ada Limón

For the woman who has found power in being wrecked. This is Ada Limón’s first book and the reason I often find myself drawn to first books is wonderfully showcased here: the voice is raw and genuine yet guided by a wisdom that only comes from surviving difficult moments. These poems show how much strength there can be in letting go, while marking the distinction between letting go as an act of avoidant dissociation by way of drinking for instance and letting go as a deliberate killing of the ego by accepting a higher power. Nonetheless, the poems don’t preach, they just tell, they ask questions: “Are we scared to discover that in fact, we are not alone?” or “Is it bad to want to commit / because one is so tired?” Bonus technical loveliness: part three of the book is a series of musical, rhyming sonnets and if there is ever a way to talk to God through poetry, I’m convinced it should rhyme.

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