Books

The Truth About Death was published by Turning Point Books in April, 2012. Read sample poems here. You can order the book from your local independent book store or on Amazon.

“In these speedy, unpredictable poems, Grace Mattern recreates her husband’s dying and her widowhood: its dream life, obsessiveness, and angry brilliance. She has an eye for the telling detail, like the wood floors adjusting to the ‘lost weight’ of the dead man, or the ‘glint of metallic memory’ in the light shining off his glasses. These poems are remarkable in their objectivity and their intelligence of the heart.” — Rosanna Warren

“Lyrical and at the same time tough-minded, these elegiac poems are very moving.”– Maxine Kumin

“These are poems intimate with grief. They hold back nothing. Here is the harrowing journey through mourning as the poet’s mind struggles to encompass the enormity of the loss of a husband. Mattern’s powerful book reminds me of Jane Kenyon’s work…in its honesty, its depth of emotion, its clarity, the beauty of its imagery and the music of its language.” — Patricia Fargnoli

“The Truth About Death takes the reader on an exhilarating hike up the slope of love, loss, grief and anger to arrive, breathless, at the summit of memory and acceptance . These poems are honest and profoundly sad, chronicling as they do the trajectory of a life partnership, a love affair cut short. But they are also sexy and funny and real. Mattern’s book should be in everyone’s back pocket…a field guide to death and love. Painstakingly annotated. Wonderfully observed. A survival handbook.” — Marie Harris

“The sculpted craft of Grace Mattern’s poems in The Truth About Death serves to contain the raw cauldron of grief and memory that fuels them, and the result is art of unusual resonance and intimacy.”  — Turning Point Books

Fever of Unknown Origin, was published by Oyster River Press in 2001, as part of the Walking to Windward series, a four box set of chapbooks by New England poets.

“Grace speaks of the events that have shaped her life and family-morning chores and a boy catching leaves in autumn. She writes of changing seasons and personal growth, with an acute sense of being that is both individual and universal.”