Words Make a Way Through Fire

A poet offers a lyrical account of recovering from the trauma of a brother’s suicide.

Dumitru, the author of Elder Moon (2019) and other books of poetry, offers a bracing account about healing from witnessing her 19-year-old brother David’s death by suicide in 1974 (when she was just 16) at their Cincinnati home, and her resulting growth as an artist as she embraced the therapeutic power of poetry writing. From there, she takes readers on her journey of healing from the horror she witnessed, starting from her initial reactions (“I feel the first twisting in my gut: a huge tangle of guilt, shock, fear, grief, and horror. It was as if, along with the smoke, I had inhaled a giant octopus, its tentacles now wrapped around my heart and lungs and stomach”), and shifting between prose and poetry throughout. The book finishes with an imagined account of her brother’s thoughts during his final night and her own letters to her late sibling about the later deaths and cremations of their parents. Dumitru’s account tells readers that healing is possible, even from unimaginable traumas, and it makes clear the importance of taking care of survivors throughout the grieving process. Ultimately, she offers a moving story of her own healing journey, related in often gorgeous prose, although readers will find the opening to be hard to read (the author includes a thoughtful trigger warning). The book’s spiritual focus, with the frequent references to “Voice” as an apparent higher power, can come across as somewhat ambiguous. However, the alternation between prose and poetry allows for a highly readable account of a deeply difficult subject.

An elegiac and beautifully written work of poetry and prose.