No Packing Necessary: Poems for the Solo Journey by Patricia Ann Joslin
Main Street Rag, March 2026

No Packing Necessary: Poems for the Solo Journey is a book of narrative poetry, easily accessible for those recovering from the loss of someone dear. It is a follow-up collection to I’ll Buy Flowers Again Tomorrow: Poems of Loss and Healing published by Charlotte Lit Press in 2023. The title of this second book comes from a line in one of the poems. It speaks to the timelessness of memory — the things we carry in our hearts. Poems reflect the shared experience of grief and the journey of moving forward as time passes. Themes include navigating loss, widowhood, aging and the magic of life in later years.

“’The divine exists even in the darkest places,’ writes Joslin, but these poems are fa from dark. Though many deal with aging, mortality, and grief, they exhibit grace, vulnerability, and empathy. She renders the world in vivid sensory detail — a flash of cardinal’s wing, rock wrens rising in song, the scent of her father’s pipe tobacco — and moves us to see the ‘bliss in the mystery of it.’” — David E. Poston, author of Letting Go.

Patricia Ann Joslin raised her family in Minnesota, and now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.