Mark Liebenow

Mark Liebenow grew up in Wisconsin. When he moved to California, he often went to Yosemite and discovered the transcendence of Nature that John Muir wrote about. It was during this time that his wife Evelyn died suddenly of an unknown heart problem when she was in her forties. Liebenow now lives in Illinois where he helps friends preserve heirloom seeds on their organic farm. He writes about grief, nature, and the theology of fools. Liebenow is the author of four books, the most recent being Mountains of Light: Seasons of Reflection in Yosemite, about going into nature to deal with grief. It was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2012. His essays, poems, and literary criticism have been published in journals like The Colorado Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Disquieting Muses Quarterly, Clackamas Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Rain Taxi Review. His poems have been set to music by composers Stephen Heinemann, “Mirage,” an eight-minute work for chorus and soprano saxophone; John Orfe, “God of the Night,” a choral piece commissioned by the Choral Arts Ensemble of Rochester, Minnesota; Robert Levy, “Maybe Sadness,” a jazz song that has been recorded. He has won the Chautauqua Nonfiction Prize, the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize, the Literal Latte Essay Prize, the Sipple Poetry Award, received honorable mentions for the Editor’s Prize at The Spoon River Poetry Review and the Academy of American Poets Prize. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, an Illinois Arts Council Award, and named a notable essay in Best American Essays 2012. Liebenow studied creative writing in the graduate school at Bradley University and English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He holds M.Div. and M.A. degrees., and speaks before groups and gives workshops on a variety of topics.

Articles:

Thanksgiving Darkness

Thanksgiving Darkness Coming home after work in late November, I hear the sounds of children laughing and look down from the BART station at the playground of St. Leander’s School. Children are running around, playing kickball, and delighting in life. My wife Evelyn tutored at the school after hours for several years as her health slowly improved after a year spent in bed exhausted by Candida, then she was hired to work full-time. But it proved to be too much too soon in her recovery, and she ran out of energy after a few weeks. Searching for what she could […]

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Deep Calls to Deep: Why Grievers Understand Each Other

I wear the black shroud of my dead, walk through dark canyons littered with bones. Sorrowful, beautiful death lives here. Silence is my companion because you are gone. * A friend who works with the grieving loves the Latin of this phrase so much (abyssus abyssum invocate), that she had it tattooed on her arm. I understand why. We both speak Grief. Megan says it’s an “invitation and statement of purpose.” The phrase comes from Psalm 42:7, and the image is of desperately longing for someone. Of being battered by a tempest of wind and water. Of being lost. Sinking. […]

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Dark World Community: Grievers Helping One Another

 When death comes, we leave the world of light behind and enter a world of shadows. Colors mute to gray. Sounds are all in the distance. Even if it’s sunny and in the eighties, the air feels cold and we wear a jacket. Food tastes like cardboard, so we don’t eat. Everything we pick up is rough to the touch. Our world shifts into slow gear. When my wife died suddenly, the world I had known went dark. The shock of what had happened was so unlike anything I had experienced before that my sensory awareness of the world went […]

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Re-Imagining Grief: When Family and Culture Offer No Help

We are taught how to grieve by the legacy carried in our families, or more accurately, we are taught how to cover death up. This presented a problem when my wife Evelyn died. I was told that one side of my family was pushed out of Scotland because of the Clearances, settled in Ireland for a time, and then came to America. I was told that the other side fled Germany in the late 1800s when Bismarck was conscripting males for another of his wars, began life in a new country, and created a farm on a prairie in Wisconsin. […]

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Open to  hope

The Far Territories of Grief

I lay you down in the resting place. As for me, I will let my hair grow matted, put on a lion skin, and roam the steppe. — Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VIII In the early days of grief, it felt like I had been thrown into the far territories of human existence. No one knew what to say or do about my wife’s sudden death in her forties.  I found myself in an abandoned, wood-plank house in skeletal backbone mountains. Sorrow was the bare window through which I looked. All light had narrowed to this. Every morning the harsh light of […]

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Open to  hope

The Fierce Tribe of After: Grief, with Attitude

Don’t make the mistake. It’s not anger you see on my face. It’s attitude. My wife died suddenly in her forties of an unknown heart problem. If you don’t know what to say to me about that, if you feel uncomfortable when I’m around because I make you worry that your spouse is about to die, then stay away. You’re probably a kind and caring person. If you don’t know grief, then all you need to say is, “I’m sorry that Evelyn died.” Then I will know you care, but leave it at that. What I need are people who […]

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Open to  hope

Already Among the Dead

I walk among the dead. This began when my wife died in April 2001. So when the planes slam into the World Trade Center, my heart doesn’t move. The towers collapse, sending clouds of dust billowing into the sky, people stumble into the streets stunned, and I feel nothing. Why should I cry? Why should I grieve faces and names I don’t know? My heart’s silence tells me that I already wander among the dead. They would not have cared about Evelyn’s death if they had known. There are too many deaths in the world to care about each one. […]

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