For Dante and Petrarch, posthumous love was a powerful conviction. Like many of their contemporaries, both poets envisioned their encounters with their beloved in heaven—Dante with Beatrice, Petrarch with Laura. But as Ramie Targoff reveals in this elegant study, English love poetry of the Renaissance brought a startling reversal of this tradition: human love became definitively mortal. Exploring the boundaries that Renaissance English poets drew between earthly and heavenly existence, Targoff seeks to understand this shift and its consequences for English poetry. Targoff shows that medieval notions of the somewhat flexible boundaries between love in this world and in the next were hardened by Protestant reformers, who envisioned a total break between the two. Tracing the narrative of this rupture, she focuses on central episodes in poetic history in which poets developed rich and compelling compensations for the lack of posthumous love—from Thomas Wyatt’s translations of Petrarch’s love sonnets and the Elizabethan sonnet series of Shakespeare and Spencer to the carpe diem poems of the seventeenth century. Targoff’s centerpiece is Romeo and Juliet, where she considers how Shakespeare’s reworking of the Italian story stripped away any expectation that the doomed teenagers would reunite in heaven. Casting new light on these familiar works of poetry and drama, this book ultimately demonstrates that the negation of posthumous love brought forth a new mode of poetics that derived its emotional and aesthetic power from its insistence upon love’s mortal limits.

Poetry. "Here are poems about papa and place. Poems about family history. Poems that rise from the casket with memories. The rooster turns its head to listen. There is something Dominican that is captured in the beak of each word as this woman moves among her people. She brings lines that are lush and filled with reminders. Yes -- 'Someone has set the cat among the pigeons.'"--E. Ethelbert Miller "The gods have bestowed a blessing on us in this radiant debut collection, LOVE LETTER TO AN AFTERLIFE. Above all else, these poems speak profoundly about survival and preservation of self and family, of language and culture, of memory and identity. These poems put in work, emboldening the many millions of us in the African diaspora in our determination to be, endure, and thrive in the new world. Ines P. Rivera Prosdocimi, we sing your name."--Jeffery Renard Allen

For the millions who have enjoyed Proof of Heaven, Heaven is Real, To Heaven and Back, and Getting to Heaven, Testimony of Light is about life after death—and the amazing story of a friendship that endured beyond the veil—published for the first time in the United States. Frances Banks died, as she had lived, fully aware of what she was experiencing and where she hoped to go. She was an Anglican nun for 25 years and for much of that time, the principal of the Teachers' Training College in Grahamstown, South Africa. She was the author of many psychological book. Her last book was Frontiers of Revelation, an account of research into psychic and mystical phenomena. Her friend Helen Greaves was by her side as she finally lapsed into unconsciousness. Then, one evening some three weeks after Frances's death, Helen sensed her presence. This extraordinary encounter marked the beginning of contact between them from both sides of the veil—between life as we know it and life on "the other side." Testimony of Light is based on these communications that Helen received telepathically from Frances. The writings have been authenticated by those who knew them both and who were familiar with their individual writing styles. Moving and inspiring, this classic book is a testament to the enduring power of their friendship, and offers an important message to us all—that the death of the body is but a gentle passing to a much freer and fuller life.

A senior at East Fresno High School lives on as a ghost after his brutal murder in the restroom of a club where he had gone to dance.

A fascinating look at the encounters of love that cross all boundaries, this insightful book explores how life-after-death experiences can help people overcome their grief and develop a deeper understanding of the life that continues after death.

A collection of personal stories that relate encounters with deceased loved ones celebrates the existence of an afterlife.

The story of Chip Oney's ongoing after-life communications with his fiance Lyn Ragan after his violent murder.