Epitaph for the Beloved

Epitaph for the Beloved is a compelling, poetic conversation in search of hope. It is written in a lyrical narrative style and includes several poems that have been nominated or won awards. Grellas delves into such topics as love, loss, and family with a new and inspiring view. Her writing incorporates the challenges of everyday life with softness, yet often surprising unpredictably. These poems are intimate and personal, yet speak to the human experience universally. Grellas' fifth full-length collection, carries with it a devotion to the discovery of emotions and all that makes us human. In this unflinching dynamic collection, Grellas examines the very evanescence of being, with an intuitive poetic heart. The following poems have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize: The Butterfly Room, A Few Concessions. Afterlight/The Miscarriage, was nominated for Best of the Net. In 2018, A Mall in California won 2nd Place for the Jack Kerouac Prize.

About the Author :
Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas lives in the Sierra Foothills. She studied at Santa Clara University, where she was an English major. She is a nine-time Pushcart nominee and a seven-time Best of the Net nominee. In 2012 she was the winner of the Red Ochre Chapbook Contest, with her manuscript, Before I Go to Sleep. She is the author of numerous books and has had hundreds of poems published in print journals and online, including War, Literature and the Arts, and The Yale Journal of Humanities in Medicine. In 2018 her poem "A Mall in California" took 2nd place for the Jack Kerouac Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in international publications as well as several anthologies across the U.S. In 2019 her chapbook An Ode to Hope in the Midst of Pandemonium was an Eric Hoffer Book Award finalist. She has been the featured poet at countless venues as well as the guest speaker at the California Writer's Club. She is the Editor-in-Chief for The Orchards Poetry Journal and Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Tule Review. She is a member of the Sacramento Poetry Center Board of Directors, Saratoga Author's Hall of Fame and has been a visiting professor at UC Davis. According to family lore, she is a direct descendant of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Review :
In this new collection of poems, by Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas the familiar becomes magical. Her poems take us on a journey of words infused with beauty and wisdom exploring momentous life events. "and fold up their childhood in cardboard boxes...the way their hands smell of water and starlight." (When They Finally Grow Up) "Do you have a pillowed place beneath your leaves for a body to lie down and nestle...Are you the kind of tree that knows you're more than a tree, the hum of everything?"(Solicitation of a Tree) "I wake in the morning the wren perched on the sill, the two of us still braided together." ("Ritual Regarding Nakedness") Spend some time wandering the pages of this book and you will discover the words that resonate with your own feelings of loss, illumination, entrances, and departures. --Jennifer O'Neill Pickering, author of Blooming in Winter In Epitaph for the Beloved, we are given gently orchestrated poems of life, love and loss that serve as urgent reminders of essential bonds of humanity, the moments that catch us out and bring us sometimes to laughter, sometimes to tears. Living is a messy business, filled with humor & pique and Ms. Grellas has captured the experience of living with great care, in detailed moments of gardening, movie watching or the exhausting desire of loved ones. With these poems, Grellas has something to say to people for a very long time, especially as the world seems to shift to casual barbarism, her poems are urgent reminders of the pulse that beats beneath the wrists and in the hearts of people in the everyday. These are poems to be read and then leisured over, returned and reflected on as one would a beloved memory, coming to a better understanding of the world with each return visit. --Brendan McEntee, author of Servicing Nostalgia (Alabaster Leaves)