This article examines a cycle of poems by Maria Kurecka, the acclaimed writer and translator, in which she mourns the loss of her husband, Witold Wirpsza, who died in 1985. Held by the archives of the Pomeranian Library in Szczecin, these unpublished poems were written in the final years of her life. In this article they are positioned and read against the background of Polish funerary poetry and its traditions. Apart from having single poems published in literary magazines, Maria Kurecka produced just one volume of poetry, Trzydzieści wierszy ( Thirty Poems, 1987). In fact, though, there may be quite a lot of poems that she chose to keep private. Remembered as an outstanding translator of German literature, Maria Kurecka the poet is virtually unknown. It is hoped that by drawing attention to her poetic work this article will contribute to a better appreciation of her achievement.

Representations of loss, grief and mourning are have a prominent place in Mikhail Shiskhin's fiction. They coexist with other parathanatological themes such as funerals and reflections on life after death. As funerals provide the proper opening of periods of mourning, the first part of the article deals with the characters’ reactions to the scenes of death and burial. It is followed, in the second part, by a close examination of the internal life of selected female characters who experience grief after the loss of a person they love. On the whole, Shiskhin's characters seem to be less preoccupied with the funeral as a social institution, but rather tend to experience bereavement in a way which is typical of a melancholic. Drawing on Jacques Derrida's conceptualization of mourning, the article demonstrates how Shishkin's female characters conceal mourning by the act of incorporating the dead into their own bodies and allowing them their voice. At the same time, the activity of letter writing enables them to hinder or even deny bereavement, and in this way, hold off the admission of a complete loss.