Elegy

by Mary Jo Bang

Book Overview

Mary Jo Bang's fifth collection, Elegy , chronicles the year following the death of her son. By weaving the particulars of her own loss into a tapestry that also contains the elements common to all losses, Bang creates something far larger than a mere lament. Continually in search of an adequate metaphor for the most profound and private grief, the poems in Elegy confront, in stark terms and with a resilient voice, how memory haunts the living and...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 155597483X
• ISBN13: 9781555974831
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Elegy

A moving series of poems that is so very personal to the author yet so universal to every reader that has suffered the loss of a loved one.

There is a Vernacular for Loss

"You are now/ only an aspect of my brain. My eyes/ see you. The Balance of what you are// And what you do- the syntax/ of inaction versus the syntax/ Of deliberate action." - p. 29 Extracted from Bang's stunning anthology on loss. Subtle, immaculate, & comprehensive. Everything about Bang's language is clean like an autopsy room. This is how the dead washes the soul of the living. Her poems read like sorrow sanitized by the seasons, by September & November, and inescapable injury of January. Beautiful and austere. How does one die of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs? How does one begin to express a voice that transcends drainage. "Your head the scene of a wonderful theater/ of the most tender gray of the fog/ that joins the sky to the earth./ A tangling of truth and memory." p. 20 I have fallen in love with Bang's astringent dialogue on sorrow. There is also something commanding about her simple vernacular. Something commanding about her sorrow. What a lovely fifth book; my first exposure.

A profoundly wonderful work

This author uniquely captures the essence of losing a close loved one. She evokes the details of the feelings honestly and gracefully without letting them overwhelm. I heartily recommend this book to one and all, as we all must deal with death at different times of our lives. Mary Jo Bang is first-rate, I may be looking for more of her work in the future.

heart-stirring

This is a beautiful book of poems written by a Mom who lost her only son through the use of drugs. It is very personal and important reading for those of us who have lost children. Mary Jo Bang was very brave for writing this book and I thank her for that. Leona Ciptak

The fifth collection of poetry by Professor of English Mary Jo Bang

The fifth collection of poetry by Professor of English Mary Jo Bang, Elegy uses free verse to communicate the loss of an only child in the prime of life. Eschewing self-pity, false comfort, or blame, Elegy burns with the power of heartbreak and the timelessness of memory. Highly recommended. "How Beautiful": A personal lens: glass bending rays / That gave one that day's news / Saying each and every day, // Just remember you are standing / On a planet that's evolving. / How beautiful, she thought, what distance does // For water, the view from above or afar. / In last night's dream, they were back again / At the beginning. She was a child // And he was a child. / A plane lit down and left her there. / Cold whitening the white sky whiter. // Then a scalpel cut her open for all the world / To be a sea.