The Penguin Book of Elegy

Autorentext
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.

Zusammenfassung
**The comprehensive guide to a deeply human tradition of memory, mourning, and consolation through poetry

A Penguin Classic**

Elegy is among the world's oldest forms of literature. Born in Ancient Greece, practiced 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, Terrance Hayes and Alice Oswald. 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 honor the dead, and to give comfort to those who survive them.

Inhalt
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 Briggflatts

  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 (1873–1956)
  Fare Well

  Toi Derricotte (1941–)
  Elegy for My Husband

  Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
  ‘Because I could not stop for Death’
  ‘Safe in their Alabaster Chambers’
  ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’

  Maura Dooley (1957–)
  I’ve Been Thinking a Lot About Heaven

  John Donne (1572–1631)
  A Funeral Elegy

  Lord Alfred Douglas (1870–1945)
  The Dead Poet

  Keith Douglas (1920–1944)
  Simplify Me When I’m Dead
  Vergissmeinnicht

  John Dryden (1631–1700)
  Upon the Death of the Lord Hastings
  To the Memory of Mr Oldham

  Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906)
  A Death Song

  William Dunbar (1459–1520)
  Lament for the Makaris

  Douglas Dunn (1942–)
  The Kaleidoscope

  Lady Katherine Dyer (c . 1585–1654)
  ‘My dearest dust could not thy hasty day’

  T. S. Eliot (1888–1965)
  from The Waste Land (Death by Water)

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
  from Threnody

  Vicki Feaver (1943–)
  Gorilla

  Caleb Femi (1990–)
  The Story of Damilola Taylor

  James Fenton (1949–)
  At the Kerb

  Sarah Louisa Forten (1814–1883)
  The Grave of the Slave

  Robert Frost (1874–1963)
  Nothing Gold Can Stay

  Robert Garioch (1909–1981)
  Elegy

  John Gay (1685–1732)
  My Own Epitaph

  Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997)
  from Kaddish

  Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774)
  Retaliation

  Lorna Goodison (1947–)
  For My Mother (May I Inherit Half Her Strength)

  Barnabe Googe (1540–1594)
  An Epytaphe of the Death of Nicolas Grimoald

  W. S. Graham (1918–1986)
  Lines on Roger Hilton’s Watch

  Robert Graves (1895–1985)
  The Untidy Man

  Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
  On the Death of Richard West
  Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
  Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes

  Thom Gunn (1929–2004)
  Lament

  Ivor Gurney (1890–1937)
  To His Love
  Song
  Cotswold Ways
  Strange Hells

  Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
  Drummer Hodge
  Thoughts of Phena
  A Singer Asleep
  The Going
  The Voice
  At Castle Boterel
  After a Journey
  During Wind and Rain
  Lying Awake

  Ton…