Inventions of Farewell collects English language poems of mourning from the late Middle Ages to the present. Aesthetic assumptions and poetic styles have altered over the centuries, yet the great and often terrifying themes of time, change, age, and death are timeless. The poems here--from Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sharon Olds, Stanley Kunitz, and W. S. Merwin--trace the trajectory of grief, but they also illustrate how the deepest sorrow has produced countless poignant and resonant works of art--words that can aid us as we struggle with our own farewells.