In the Unwalled City

In the Unwalled City takes its title from Epicurus, who

wrote: “Against other things it is possible to obtain security, but when it

comes to death, we human beings all live in an unwalled city.” This affecting

book—which weaves prose memoir with poetry—explores that feeling of being open

to attack—in this case the pain of grief after Robert Cording’s

thirty-one-year-old son Daniel died.

To borrow a phrase from C.S. Lewis,

here is “a grief observed,” encompassing not only the big questions but also

the impact of grief on daily life. For a poet like Cording, one form that grief

takes is that of speaking to his son. In “Afterlife,” Cording has a vision of

his son replying: “let the emptiness remain empty . . . Stop writing down /

everything you think I’m telling you. / This is your afterlife, not mine.”

At the heart of In the Unwalled

City is a series of questions: How does loss change a person? How does one

chart a new life that both acknowledges a son’s death and still finds a way

back to delight? How does one now live fully in the unwalled city?