Requiem

Metelerkamp's fifth book of poems was written after the suicide of her mother. The book is a sequence of poems, with Latin subtitles taken from sections of the Requiem Mass. The relationship between the poem and the mass is often oblique, tangential, ironic, and sometimes also direct. Written in Metelerkamp's distinctive musical voice, the sequence articulates the process of mourning, exploring the issues of life and death. The poems record a layered search for some meaningful explanation of the ambiguous connection between love and destruction.