Earth Elegy: New and Selected Poems

by Margaret Gibson

To poems selected from Margaret Gibson’s five previous volumes, Earth Elegy adds a book-length collection of new verse. Together they trace the workings of a sensibility that focuses emotional intensity like light through a magnifying glass, bringing its subjects alive in blazes of almost unbearable clarity.

Earth Elegy, writes Carolyn Forché, “partakes of Rilke’s apprehension of poetry as ‘the natural prayer of the human soul,’ issuing from a radiant knowledge of the radical contingency of all life, in the precariousness of its presence and futurity. These are requia of resistance, reminding us that life itself, our sojourn on earth, is the deepest spiritual practice.”

Earth Elegy demonstrates Gibson’s mastery and powerful reach. Here is a body of work richly rooted in meditative solitude and social struggle―compassionate in its belief in human dignity, passionate in its exploration of the dynamics of radiance and grief in our psychic and social lives.

Genres: Poetry

224 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1997

About the author

Margaret Gibson is the author of ten books of poems and one prose memoir. A native of Virginia, now a resident of Preston, Connecticut, she is a nationally and internationally recognized poet. She has received numerous honors, including the Connecticut Book Award and the Melville Kane Award, and her collection The Vigil was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry.

Reviews

[Sarah Spaulding Avento · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Margaret Gibson read. So glad I stumbled upon this in a thrift store. Gibson’s connection with wind, light, and the natural and spiritual world is right up my alley. Being a book of selected poems, Gibson’s range of depth and subject matter jumps out at me. She’s spiritual but also firmly grounded in community, in people, in gardens. I will be digging into more of her volumes.