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<''A tremendous sentimental education of a book ... scholarly discernment mixed with a wild-card flair ... an exceptional anthology, fascinating and unignorable'' Kate Kellaway, Observer (Poetry Book of the Month)
Elegy is among the world''s oldest forms of literature. Born in Ancient Greece, practised by the Romans, revitalized by the poets of the Renaissance and continuing down to the present day, it speaks eloquently and affectingly of the experience of loss and the yearning for consolation. It gives shape and meaning to memories too painful to contemplate, and answers our desire to fix in words what would otherwise slip our grasp.
In The Penguin Book of Elegy, Andrew Motion and Stephen Regan trace the history of this tradition, from its Classical roots in the work of Theocritus, Virgil and Ovid down to modern compositions exploring personal tragedy and collective grief by such celebrated voices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Denise Riley.
The only comprehensive anthology of its kind in the English language, The Penguin Book of Elegy is a profound and moving compendium of the fundamentally human urges to remember and honour the dead, and to give comfort to those who survive them.<>
List of contents
Contents
Introduction
A Note on the Text
Anonymous
Cock Robin
The Corpus Christi Carol
The Three Ravens
Sir Patrick Spens
The Wife of Usher s Well
from Pearl
Dahn the Plug ole
Raymond Antrobus (1986 )
Sound Machine
Matthew Arnold (1822 1892)
Memorial Verses
W. H. Auden (1907 1973)
In Memory of W. B. Yeats
William Barnes (1801 1886)
The Music o the Dead
The Wife a-Lost
Woak Hill
Paul Batchelor (1977 )
Pit Ponies
Hilaire Belloc (1870 1953)
Matilda
Gwendolyn Bennett (1902 1981)
Epitaph
John Berryman (1914 1972)
Dream Song 155
The King James Bible (1611)
2 Samuel 1
Ecclesiastes 3
Laurence Binyon (1869 1943)
For the Fallen
Bion (c . 120 57 BCE)
Lament for Adonis
Elizabeth Bishop (1911 1979)
North Haven
William Blake (1757 1827)
Nurse s Song (Songs of Innocence)
Nurse s Song (Songs of Experience)
The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence)
The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Experience)
Ma lika Booker (1970 )
Death of an Overseer
Elizabeth Boyd (c . 1710 1745)
On the Death of an Infant of Five Days Old
Anne Bradstreet (1612 1672)
In Memory of My Dear Grandchild, Elizabeth Bradstreet
Ka mau Brathwaite (1930 2020)
Elegy for Rosita
Robert Bridges (1844 1930)
On a Dead Child
Charlotte Brontë (1816 1855)
On the Death of Emily Jane Brontë
Emily Brontë (1818 1848)
Remembrance
Rupert Brooke (1887 1915)
The Soldier
Jericho Brown (1976 )
The Tradition
William Browne (c. 1590 1645)
On the Countess Dowager of Pembroke
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 1861)
Felicia Hemans
L. E. L. s Last Question
Mother and Poet
Basil Bunting (1900 1985)
from Brigg atts
Robert Burns (1759 1796)
Epitaph for James Smith
Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788 1824)
Stanzas for Music
Remember thee! Remember thee!
On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year
Elegy on Thyrza
Christian Campbell (1979 )
Rudical (Derek Bennett, killed by the police)
Thomas Campion (1567 1620)
O Come Quickly!
Thomas Carew (c . 1595 1640)
An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of Paul s, Dr John Donne
Epitaph for Maria Wentworth
Ciaran Carson (1948 2019)
In Memory
Elizabeth Carter (1717 1806)
On the Death of Mrs Rowe
Catullus (c . 84 54 BCE)
Elegy on the Sparrow
Catullus 101
Charles Causley (1917 2003)
Eden Rock
C. P. Cavafy (1863 1933)
For Ammonis, Who Died Aged 29 in 610
Jane Cave (1754 1812)
An Elegy on a Maiden Name
Paul Celan (1920 1970)
Deathfugue
Amy Clampitt (1920 1994)
A Procession at Candlemas
John Clare (1793 1864)
The Lament of Swordy Well
I Am
Lucille Clifton (1936 2010)
the lost baby poem
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 1834)
Epitaph
Tony Connor (1930 )
Elegy for Alfred Hubbard
Abraham Cowley (1618 1667)
On the Death of Mr William Hervey
William Cowper (1731 1800)
Epitaph on a Hare
The Poplar Field
Hart Crane (1899 1932)
At Melville s Tomb
Richard Crashaw (1613 1649)
A Hymn to the Name and Honour of the Admirable Saint Teresa
An Epitaph upon Husband and Wife
Countee Cullen (1903 1946)
Colored Blues Singer
Threnody for a Brown Girl
Walter de la Mare (1873&ndas
About the author
Stephen Regan's books include Irish Writing: An Anthology of Irish Literature in English 1789-1939 (2004) and The Sonnet (2019). He has taught at Ruskin College, Oxford; Royal Holloway, University of London; and Durham University, where he is Professor Emeritus. He is currently a Research Associate at the University of Melbourne.Andrew Motion's most recent collection is New and Selected Poems 1977-2022 (2023). He was UK Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009, is co-founder of The Poetry Archive and Poetry by Heart, and since 2015 has lived in Baltimore, where he is Homewood Professor of the Arts at Johns Hopkins University.
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If you have any weakness for poetry at all this book will draw you in then devastate you Susie Goldsbrough The Times
