“All poetry is about the death of the beloved.”
— Faiz Ahmed Faiz (cited by Donald Hall in The Painted Bed)
Jeffrey Berman, Companionship in Grief: Love and Loss in the Memoirs of C.S. Lewis, John Bayley, Donald Hall, Joan Didion (University of Massachussetts, )
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (1961)
John Bayley, Elegy for Iris (1998)
Donald Hall, Without (1998); The Best of Times, the Worst of Times (2005)
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)
There are quotations from A Grief Observed, here; and here:
and a review of a reprint of the book by Hilary Mantel.
You can read one of the poems in Without here. And another, here.
You can read an extract from Didion’s book here.