What can poetry do in the face of gun violence? Critic at large Adriana E. Ramirez attended a reading — in Florida, not long after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland — that paired the work of poets with the voices of the families of survivors. “Throughout the anthology and evening, the image of a loved one, usually a mother, still crying, still holding on, permeates,” she writes. “The image emerges again and again, but it’s never old. The pain of losing someone is always fresh, always necessary.”
