Teresa Carmody Reviews One Mint One

July 15th, 2026

Grief, love, memory, and the relationships that shape our lives are at the heart of One Mint One, the latest poetry collection by acclaimed poet Prageeta Sharma.

On Between Two Covers, Dr. Teresa Carmody, associate professor in the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Writers’ Workshop, explores Sharma’s sixth collection, published in 2025 by Wave Books, and the profound questions it asks about loss, identity, and human connection.

The title, One Mint One, is inspired by Barnett Newman’s 1948 abstract expressionist painting One Mint One. Carmody explains that while Newman’s work centers on a single vertical line against a deep burgundy background, Sharma makes one subtle but significant change to the title: replacing the Roman numeral “I” with the word “Won.”

That simple shift, Carmody says, transforms the title into a meditation on what is gained—and what it costs—to arrive at a new chapter in life.

The collection follows Sharma’s acclaimed Grief Sequence, which chronicled the death of her first husband from cancer. In One Mint One, readers encounter another devastating chapter as her second husband faces terminal cancer, leaving Sharma to confront profound loss once again.

Yet Carmody emphasizes that the collection reaches far beyond mourning.

“One Mint One is a book about grief and fate and loss and acceptance,” she says. “It is also about relation.”

Rather than treating grief as an abstract concept, Sharma grounds each poem in deeply personal relationships. The poems explore not only the loss of spouses, but also friendships, family, stepchildren, marriage, and the evolving sense of self that exists in relationship to others.

Carmody notes that Sharma continually asks fundamental questions throughout the collection: What is a poem? What can language accomplish? How do people live with one another, and what responsibilities do they share?

Those questions rarely receive simple answers. Instead, they become the very structure of the poems themselves, inviting readers to remain curious rather than seeking certainty.

Like the single line in Newman’s painting, Sharma’s poetry draws connections while acknowledging separation, holding memory and presence together within the same space.

Readers will have an opportunity to hear Sharma in person when she visits Omaha this fall as part of the UNO Writers’ Workshop Reading Series. She is scheduled to read at the Samuel Bak Museum on September 23.

For Carmody, One Mint One offers readers an intimate reflection on grief, resilience, and the ways poetry helps us understand the people—and lives—we carry with us.