Elegy with Records on the Doorstep
The old music still filled pits in him like sawdust and wood glue do a nail hole. The songs didn’t say anything new over the years, but they provided home when he missed it.
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Posts Tagged: elegy
Poem of the Day: “At Night the States” by Alice Notley
“At Night the States” is a famous poem that, whether you have or haven’t heard it before, strikes you over the head repeatedly. Formally inventive without any loss in the depth of its feeling, Notley transcends the genre of elegy to an expression of grief that might register unmediated: it is a present poem, an […]
...moreA Eulogy for the Eulogy
Twentieth century philosopher J.L. Austin asked in his writing what words and phrases could do in their utterance. In this tradition, Nick Ripatrazone examines Morgan Meis and Stefanie Anne Goldberg’s fictionalized eulogy collection, Dead People, to find out what the memorializing of public figures like Kurt Cobain and Christopher Hitchens actually do in their tellings, […]
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A Dying Art: Carrie & Lowell and Elegiac Practice
Elegy cannot protect us. It is merely a contained space for us to prowl, and to prowl in a performative manner.
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The Rumpus Interview with Edward Hirsch
Dean Rader talks with Edward Hirsch about his new book Gabriel, the pain of losing a child, and the challenges of writing grief.
...morePoetry and a Son’s Death
Finding a way to grieve for the passing of a child is a complicated matter. Poet Edward Hirsch lost his son in 2011, and has just completed a 76-page elegy that will be published in September titled Gabriel. Alec Wilkinson goes deep into Hirsch’s moving story at the New Yorker.
...moreAnne Carson’s Luminous Fold-Out Elegy Scrap Book
Anne Carson’s new book Nox, at first sight looks like a Vollmann-esque door stopper of at least a thousand pages — until you hold the book and realize that it opens like a treasure box to reveal an accordion-like sprawl of paper that unfolds and keeps unfolding on your desk. The pages are filled with […]
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