Loss: An Anthology

by Elspeth Barker (Editor)

A collection from the literature of loss, combining deep emotion with moments of levity Elspeth Barker is no stranger to loss. In this very personal selection, she shows it's many aspects. Death and bereavement form the core, but there is also loss of liberty, homeland, freedom, faith and inspiration. In prose and verse, from the Old Testament and the Greek Anthology to the present day, she finds strong feeling and deep emotion. But the strength eloquence and, at times, the wit of the writers and the power of their writing bring relief and reassurance that,in acknowledging and understanding loss, we celebrate what has been.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

187 pages, Hardcover

First published November 3, 1997

About the author

Elspeth Barker was a novelist and journalist. She was educated in Scotland and at Oxford.

Barker's novel O Caledonia won four awards and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. She has reviewed extensively and written features for the Independent on Sunday, Guardian, Sunday Times, Observer, LRB, TLS, Harpers & Queen, Scotland on Sunday, Country Living, Vogue, etc. She edited the anthology Loss for Dent/Orion in 1997.

Her first husband was the poet George Barker by whom she had five children, including the novelist Raffaella Barker. In 2007 she married the writer Bill Troop.

Reviews

[Jodi]

edited by Elspeth Barker. I won this book in our hospital library discontinued books give-a-way ... mostly poems and this is my favourite:
Rainer Maria Rilke
from Duino Elegies

Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic
orders? And even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I should fade in the strength
of his
stronger existence. For Beauty's nothing
but beginning of Terror we're still just able to bear,
and why we adore it so is because it serenely
disdains to destroy us. Each single angel is terrible.
And so I repress myself, and swallow the call-note
of depth-dark sobbing. Alas, who is there
we can make use of? Not angels, not men;
and already the knowing brutes are aware
that we don't feel very securely at home
within our interpreted world.

[Iman · Rating 3 out of 5]

my favourites: never, my love and dearest. takin your problems with you. the politics of exile. piano. funeral blues. the city. the unquiet grave. address not known. aubade. mean time. from the politics of experience.