The idea of mourning as the source of poetry and art is explored in
this collection of nearly 150 epitaphs, requiems and laments.
Celebrating what Elizabeth Bishop called 'the art of losing' - loss
rather than death itself is the unifying theme. Rage, inconsolable
grief, comedy and pathos all figure - lost time and loved ones,
human and animal, are lamented as the likes of Hardy, Wilfred Owen,
Auden and Joseph Milton address that most fundamental of human
realities. Grimly, this book would be useful for anyone planning a
funeral service but perhaps Gavin Ewart's cautionary tone is to be
heeded: 'There's a time for the masterly plaint/ weeping the loss
of the flower./ That time isn't yet; so don't rush it./Keep the
heartfelt iambics on ice./ Human love is delicate flower -/ a canto
coul crush it.' (Kirkus UK)
Many cultures identify mourning as the very source of poetry and
music, what Elizabeth Bishop calls the art of losing. That might
well be the title of this collection. Not every poem is cornered
with death, but all are about loss. The poems chosen traverse a
surprisingly wide range of emotions from despair to joy,
resignation to anger, all articulated in language of the greatest
power and beauty . All the major verse forms of mourning are
represented here: epitaph, requiem and lament. Three great elergies
by Milton, Whitman and Rilke are surrounded by a wide variety of
shorter poems. Naturally, the pathos of death predominates, but its
comedy has not been neglected, whether in the savage poems of World
War I or the gentle teasing of seventeenth-century satire. Poets
include: Akhmatova, Auden, Bishop, Brodsky, Browning, Carew, Cory,
Cowley, Dickinson, Donne, Dryden, Dyer, Fletcher, Graves, Gurney,
Hardy, Harrison, Herrick, Hopkins, Horace, King, Leopardi, Lowell,
MacCaig, Mandelstam, Milosz, Philips, Propertius, Roethke, Smith,
Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, Edward Thomas and Wordsworth.
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