In the Unwalled City

In the Unwalled City takes its title from Epicurus, who
wrote: "Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it
comes to death, we human beings all live in an unwalled city." This affecting
book-which weaves prose memoir with poetry-explores that feeling of being open
to attack-in this case the pain of grief after Robert Cording's
thirty-one-year-old son Daniel died.

To borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis,
here is "a grief observed," encompassing not only the big questions but also
the impact of grief on daily life. For a poet like Cording, one form that grief
takes is that of speaking to his son. In "Afterlife," Cording has a vision of
his son replying: "let the emptiness remain empty...Stop writing down /
everything you think I'm telling you. / This is your afterlife, not mine."

At the heart of In the Unwalled
City is a series of questions: How does loss change a person? How does one
chart a new life that both acknowledges a son's death and still finds a way
back to delight? How does one now live fully in the unwalled city?