Seamus and Mark look at four elegies written for family members, ranging from the romantic period to the 2010s, each of which avoids, deliberately or not, what Freud described as the work of mourning. William Wordsworth’s ‘Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a View of Peele Castle’ (1807) is an oblique memorial to a brother that seems scarcely able to mention its subject. Like Wordsworth, Denise Riley’s elegy for her son, ‘A Part Song’ (2012), embraces the atemporal nature of poetry as a protest against the destructive power of time, but also uses dramatic shifts in register to openly question the use of ‘song’ as a method of mourning. Robert Lowell’s elegies for his parents, from Life Studies (1959), offer a startling resistance to the traditional elegiac mode by spurning the urge to grandiloquence with a series of prosaic vignettes. Anne Carson’s ‘Nox’ (2010) goes further by challenging the idea of a coherent account of someone’s life entirely, with a sequence of fragments contained within a single sheet of paper, ranging from poems and translations to telephone conversations, photographs and drawings, as a deliberately disordered memory of her relationship with her brother that nonetheless exposes the purest ingredients of elegy.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrld⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsld

Poems discussed in this episode:

William Wordsworth, ‘Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a View of Peele Castle’

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45516/elegiac-stanzas-suggested-by-a-picture-of-peele-castle-in-a-storm-painted-by-sir-george-beaumont

Robert Lowell, selections from ’Life Studies’

https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/life-studies-robert-lowell

Denise Riley, ‘A Part Song’

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n03/denise-riley/a-part-song

Anne Carson, Nox

https://www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/nox-anne-carson

Next episode: ‘Poems of 1912-1913’ by Thomas Hardy.

LRB Audiobooks

Discover audiobooks from the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksld

As long as there have been poets, they have been writing war elegies. In this episode, Mark and Seamus discuss responses to the American Civil War (Walt Whitman), both world wars (W.B. Yeats, Wilfred Owen, Rudyard Kipling, Keith Douglas) and the conflict in Northern Ireland (Michael Longley) to explore the way these very different poems share an ancient legacy. Spanning 160 years and energised by competing ideas of art and war, these soldiers, carers and civilians are united by a need that Mark and Seamus suggest is at the root of poetry, to memorialise the dead in words.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrld⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsld⁠

Poems discussed in this episode:

Walt Whitman, ‘Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night’

⁠⁠https://⁠⁠⁠⁠w⁠⁠⁠⁠ww.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45478/vigil-strange-i-kept-on-the-field-one-night⁠⁠

Wilfred Owen, ‘Futility’

⁠⁠https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57283/futility-56d23aa2d4b57⁠⁠

Keith Douglas, ‘Vergissmeinnicht’

⁠⁠https://warpoets.org.uk/worldwar2/poem/vergissmeinnicht/⁠⁠

W.B. Yeats, ‘An Irish Airman foresees his Death’

⁠⁠https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57311/an-irish-airman-foresees-his-death⁠⁠

Michael Longley, ‘The Ice-Cream Man’

⁠⁠https://poetryarchive.org/poem/ice-cream-man/⁠⁠

Rudyard Kipling, ‘Epitaphs of the War’

⁠⁠https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57409/epitaphs-of-the-war⁠⁠

Further reading in the LRB:

Ian Hamilton on Keith Douglas’s letters:

https://lrb.me/ldwar1

Jonathan Bate on war poetry:

https://lrb.me/ldwar2

Poems by Michael Longley published in the LRB:

⁠⁠https://lrb.me/ldwar3

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Tennyson described In Memoriam as ‘rather the cry of the whole human race than mine’, and the poem achieved widespread acclaim as soon as it was published in 1850, cited by Queen Victoria as her habitual reading after the death of Prince Albert. Its subject is the death in 1833 of Tennyson’s friend Arthur Hallam at the age of 22, and in its 131 sections it explores the possibilities of elegy more extensively than any English poem before it, not least in its innovative, incantatory rhyme scheme, intended to numb the pain of grief. From its repeated dramatisations of the experience of private loss, In Memoriam opens out to reflect on the intellectual turmoil running through Victorian society amid monumental advances in scientific thought. In this episode, Seamus and Mark discuss the unique emotional power of Tennyson’s style, and why his great elegy came to represent what mourning, and poetry, should be in the public imagination of his time.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrld⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsld

Read more in the LRB:

Frank Kermode:

https://lrb.me/ldtenn1

Seamus Perry:

https://lrb.me/ldtenn2

LRB Audiobooks

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Philip Larkin was terrified of death from an early age; Thomas Hardy contemplated what the neighbours would say after he had gone; and Sylvia Plath imagined her own death in vivid and controversial ways. The genre of self-elegy, in which poets have reflected on their own passing, is a small but eloquent one in the history of English poetry.

In this episode, Seamus and Mark consider some of its most striking examples, including Chidiock Tichborne’s laconic lament on the night of his execution in 1586, Jonathan Swift’s breezy anticipation of his posthumous reception, and the more comfortless efforts of 20th-century poets confronting godless extinction.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrld⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsld

Read more in the LRB:

Jacqueline Rose on Plath:

⁠⁠https://lrb.me/ldself1

David Runciman on Larkin and his father:

https://lrb.me/ldself2

John Bayley on Larkin

⁠⁠https://lrb.me/ldself3

Matthew Bevis on Hardy:

⁠⁠https://lrb.me/ldself4

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The confessional poets of the mid-20th century considered themselves a ‘doomed’ generation, with a cohesive identity and destiny. Their intertwining personal lives were laid bare in their work, and Robert Lowell, John Berryman and Elizabeth Bishop returned repeatedly to the elegy to commemorate old friends and settle old scores.In this episode, Mark and Seamus turn to elegies for poets by poets, tracing the intricate connections between them. Lowell, Berryman and Bishop’s work was offset by a deep commitment to the literary tradition, and Mark and Seamus identify their shared influences and anxieties.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrld⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsld

Further reading in the LRB:

Mark Ford: No One Else Can Take a Bath for You

https://lrb.me/ldpoets1

Karl Miller: Some Names for Robert Lowell

https://lrb.me/ldpoets2

Nicholas Everett: Two Americas and a Scotland

https://lrb.me/ldpoets3

Helen Vendler: The Numinous Moose

https://lrb.me/ldpoets4

LRB Audiobooks

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Situated on the cusp of the Romantic era, Thomas Gray’s work is a mixture of impersonal Augustan abstraction and intense subjectivity. ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ is one of the most famous poems in the English language, and continues to exert its influence on contemporary poetry. Mark and Seamus explore three of Gray’s elegiac poems and their peculiar emotional power. They discuss Gray’s ambiguous sexuality, his procrastination and class anxieties, and where his humour shines through – as in his elegy for Horace Walpole’s cat.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrld⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsld

Further reading in the LRB:

John Mullan: Unpranked Lyre

⁠⁠https://lrb.me/ldgray1

Tony Harrison: ‘V.’

⁠⁠https://lrb.me/ldgray2

Read the texts online:

⁠⁠https://www.thomasgray.org/texts/poems/sorw⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.thomasgray.org/texts/poems/elcc⁠⁠

⁠⁠https://www.thomasgray.org/texts/poems/odfc⁠⁠

LRB Audiobooks

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This episode looks at four poems whose subject would seem to lie beyond words: the death of a child. A defining feature of elegy is the struggle between poetic eloquence and inarticulate grief, and in these works by Ben Jonson, Anne Bradstreet, Geoffrey Hill and Elizabeth Bishop we find that tension at its most acute. Mark and Seamus consider the way each poem deals with the traditional demand of the elegy for consolation, and what happens when the form and language of love poetry subverts elegiac conventions.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrld⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsld

Read the poems here:

Ben Jonson: On My First Son

⁠⁠https://lrb.me/jonsoncrld⁠⁠

Anne Bradstreet:In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet

⁠⁠https://lrb.me/bradstreetcrld⁠⁠

Geoffrey Hill: September Song

⁠⁠https://lrb.me/hillcrld⁠⁠

Elizabeth Bishop: First Death in Nova Scotia

⁠⁠https://lrb.me/bishopcrld⁠⁠

Read more in the LRB:

Blair Worden on Ben Jonson

https://lrb.me/ldch1

Blair Worden on puritanism

https://lrb.me/ldch2

Colin Burrow in Geoffrey Hill:

https://lrb.me/ldch3

Helen Vendler on Elizabeth Bishop

https://lrb.me/ldch4

Next episode:

Elegies by Thomas Gray:

⁠⁠https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44299/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard⁠⁠

⁠https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44305/on-the-death-of-richard-west⁠

⁠⁠https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44302/ode-on-the-death-of-a-favourite-cat-drowned-in-a-tub-of-goldfishes⁠⁠

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Milton wrote ‘Lycidas’ in 1637, at the age of 29, to commemorate the drowning of the poet Edward King. As well as a great pastoral elegy, it is a denunciation of the ecclesiastical condition of England and a rehearsal for Milton’s later role as a writer of national epic. In the first episode of their new series, Seamus and Mark discuss the political backdrop to the poem, Milton’s virtuosic mix of poetic tradition and innovation, and why such a fervent puritan would choose an unfashionable, pre-Christian form to honour his friend.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and to all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/applecrld⁠⁠

In other podcast apps: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/closereadingsld

Read 'Lycidas': ⁠⁠https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44733/lycidas⁠⁠

Read more in the LRB:

Colin Burrow (on the 'two-handed engine'):

https://lrb.me/ldmilton1

Freya Johnston (on Samuel Johnson's criticism):

https://lrb.me/ldmilton2

Maggie Kilgour (on the young Milton):

https://lrb.me/ldmilton3

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Mark Ford and Seamus Perry introduce Love and Death, a new Close Readings series on elegy from the Renaissance to the present day. They discuss why the elegy can be a particularly energising form for poets engaging with their craft and the poetic tradition, and how elegy serves an important role in public grieving, remembering and healing.

Mark Ford is Professor of English at University College, London, and Seamus Perry is Professor of English Literature at Balliol College, Oxford.