Patricia McKernon Runkle. Grief’s Compass: Walking in the Wilderness with Emily Dickinson (Apprentice House Press, 2017)

by Marcia LeBeau

From the beginning of Patricia McKernon Runkle’s multi-genre book, Grief’s Compass: Walking in the Wilderness with Emily Dickinson, she promises no remedies or comfort for grief—only a companionship with others who have walked that path. Foremost among these companions is Emily Dickinson, whose poetry permeates the eponymous wildness of the book. Runkle writes, “Grief is a holy madness. It is not a puzzle to be solved, a problem to be overcome, a situation to be managed.” Throughout the book she repeatedly conveys that there are no answers, no comfort that can be given when you are deep in the throes of grief. This profound stasis she knows as grief might not be comfortable for the reader, but somehow, it’s deeply beautiful and can’t help but draw you in and open you up.

Runkle expertly uses poems, journal entries, illustrations, dialogue (in script form), and prose to tell her story of her brother’s suicide, emphasizing that hers is one of a multiplicity of stories about the tragedy. Her ginger steps convey the clearly urgent need she feels to tell this story in a way that is most authentic. This is not an author who set out to make a trendy “genre mashup” book. On the contrary, the form seems a necessity for the subject, as if she is grabbing on to anything that will hold her. As if this is all she can do. In this way, she finds her way, as best she can.

The book’s structure is key to its success as well. As the title suggests, she organizes the book as a compass, beginning with South (the loss); East (the story); West (the memory); North (the healing). If you follow these directions on an actual compass you will get a zig zag, and that is indeed what the reader gets. There is no solid ground in this book and that is Runkle’s intention. It is what makes the writing so unsettling and important. Here death, specifically suicide, and grieving is not wrapped up in a pretty, digestible package, but unwrapped and examined with a powerfully unique lyricism that lets go of logic and honors complexity.

The way she deftly uses Emily Dickinson’s poems to help her through this wildness and weaves them throughout the text offers a different vantage point which increases their already startling potency. The trust Runkle places in Dickinson’s poems is palpable. When Runkle is questioning her faith, she examines Dickinson’s words carefully, “Of Course—I prayed—/And did God care?/He cared as much as on the Air/A Bird—had stamped her foot/And cried ‘Give me’—" Where do you turn when it looks like God has not listened to a person in dire need?

One begins to wish everyone knew to reach for Emily Dickinson in their darkest moments of grief. Is it too dramatic to say poetry saves lives? Maybe we can say that poetry can save the living. Maybe we can say poetry saves souls. Runkle certainly shows us through her experience. We wish she had Dickinson when she experiences her first great loss at age six, a profound grief which began her “one true obsession—present absence, absent presence—the paradox at the heart of grief.”

Having walked this path, Runkle is able to offer advice to those of us looking to comfort others walking the path. Her own poem “When You Meet Someone Deep in Grief” begins with these sage words: “Slip off your needs/and set them by the door” and leads us to a metaphorical “hollowed” and “hallowed” chapel where she says, “Make no sound,/let the candles speak.” Runkle’s poems are informed by her experience, and coupled with Dickinson’s wisdom, are a gift to the reader at every turn. I don’t think it would be an overstatement to say that Runkle is a bit of a modern-day Dickinson. “Scarring,” “In The Darkness,” and “The Great Benevolence” are examples of Runkle’s own poems of prayer. In “The Darkness,” Runkle writes, “I bow/before the/mystery/of boundless/grace and/compassion” in italics, as if she is speaking her prayer aloud.

I gave this book to an acquaintance soon after she lost her sister to suicide. She must have seen in my eyes how much I wanted her to read it, to find a companion in Runkle. She thanked me and told me several times she wasn’t ready yet to read it. I tried to let her know that was fine, to take her time, to read it when she was ready. When that day comes, these delicate, insightful, and profoundly powerful pages will be there for her, ready to take her hand and walk with her through the wilderness.