Green Ivy Grows Over Their Graves, Tra La by Janice D. Soderling (2020) is a collection of received forms, vers libre, and prose poems. The red thread tying them all together is our ultimate shared fate: death.

Some poems are in a lighter vein,

Consider now the frantic surge of sperm,
each rushing blindly, lacking aperçu.
How one, a little quicker than the rest,
careens into the other half of you.
--The Journey

while others adopt a more somber bent,

Lord, let them be content with solitude.
Let the wind move gently over their jutting bones.
Croon them to sleep with their old pet names.
--The Graveyard at the Ruins of the Monastery)

Most of the poems contained here appeared in international literary journals such as Measure, The Literary Bohemian and Mezzo Cammin; some are in print for the first time.

This is a volume for poetry lovers to dip into, to return to.