Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney

by Jahan Ramazani

Called the "mother of beauty" by Wallace Stevens, death has been perhaps the favorite muse of modern poets. From Langston Hughes's lynch poems to Sylvia Plath's father elegies, modern poetry has tried to find a language of mourning in an age of mass death, religious doubt, and forgotten ritual. For this reason, Jahan Ramazani argues, the elegy, one of the most ancient of poetic genres, has remained one of the most vital to modern poets.

Through subtle readings of elegies, self-elegies, war poems, and the blues, Ramazani greatly enriches our critical understanding of a wide range of poets, including Thomas Hardy, Wilfred Owen, Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, W. H. Auden, Sylvia Plath, and Seamus Heaney. He also interprets the signal contributions to the American family elegy of Robert Lowell, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Sexton, John Berryman, Adrienne Rich, Michael Harper, and Amy Clampitt. Finally, he suggests analogies between the elegy and other kinds of contemporary mourning art—in particular, the AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Grounded in genre theory and in the psychoanalysis of mourning, Ramazani's readings also draw on various historical, formal, and feminist critical approaches. This book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the psychology of mourning or the history of modern poetry.

"Consists of full, intelligent and lucid exposition and close reading. . . . Poetry of Mourning is itself a welcome contribution to modern poetry's search for a 'resonant yet credible vocabulary of grief in our time."— Times Literary Supplement

Genres: Poetry, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction

436 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

This feels a central text to the 20th century elegy has anybody noticed I'm a happy person lately

Look I will be using this plenty going ahead Ramazani is amazing & the distinct chapters work shockingly well as discreet texts. but it doesn't make me any smoother xx

[Boro · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was the most helpful and reader friendly book I read on the topic. Highly interesting, and well-written.

[Harrison Glaze · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are interested all in the history of the elegy, then this book is really helpful. Ramazani positions everything really well, and gives the book a really nice introduction that positions the idea of elegy within the both the past and present. This is also a great book to source hunt in and find a lot of other really well written books on the elegy. I used this to write a paper on Yeats and the idea of a "Modernist Elegy."

[Jessica DeLaCruz]

Incredible. It made me think about the way that I read poetry, and has given me ideas of new styles to write in. I absolutely loved it.