Inventions of Farewell: A Book of Elegies

by Sandra M. Gilbert (Editor)

A collection of poetic responses to loss―both consolation and inspiration to any reader. Death has always served as one of the most powerful catalysts for poetry. Whether with Dylan Thomas, counseling readers to "Rage, rage against the dying of the light," or with Walt Whitman, taking comfort in the serene arrival "sooner or later" of "delicate death," poets throughout history have faced the mortal losses that all of us inevitably encounter. Inventions of Farewell collects English language poems of mourning from the late Middle Ages to the present. Aesthetic assumptions and poetic styles have altered over the centuries, yet the great and often terrifying themes of time, change, age, and death are timeless. The poems here―from Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sharon Olds, Stanley Kunitz, and W. S. Merwin―trace the trajectory of grief, but they also illustrate how the deepest sorrow has produced countless poignant and resonant works of art―words that can aid us as we struggle with our own farewells.

Genres: Poetry

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 16, 2001

About the author

Sandra M. Gilbert was an American literary critic and poet who published in the fields of feminist literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic criticism. She was best known for her collaborative critical work with Susan Gubar, with whom she co-authored, among other works, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979). Madwoman in the Attic is widely recognized as a text central to second-wave feminism. She was Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Davis.
Gilbert lived in Berkeley, California, and lived, until 2008, in Paris, France. Her husband, Elliot L. Gilbert, was chair of the Department of English at University of California, Davis, until his death in 1991. She also had a long-term relationship with David Gale, mathematician at University of California, Berkeley, until his death in 2008.

Reviews

[Jonfaith]

I have lost three friends in the last month. One from cirrhosis, one from complications of dementia and one an apparent suicide. I wasn't prepared for this cluster. I had bought this anthology a short while ago, largely based on the number of Modernist and contemporary selections. The high marks of this tome were a bit obvious: Lycidas and Adonais set the standard.

What softer voice is hush'd over the dead?
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?

I have danced if only in my imagination to that lyric all morning. I have also looked to Thom Gunn a poet who I knew by name and reputation but hadn't encountered much of his work. That will now change as I was dazzled by his image of the dead gathering in groups to watch us on tv until boredom leads to entropy. Yesterday I at last felt myself recovering and it would be foolish to say that this anthology didn't play a role in such.

[Ellice]

There are quite a few collections of verse related to death and mourning. I picked up this one because I knew Sandra M. Gilbert from The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. The poems were a bit of a mixed bag--some that didn't appeal to me, or seemed dated, along with many that spoke directly to my soul. A recommended volume for those who are processing a loss of their own.

[Mahsa]

کتاب مجموعه ای از حوادث حوالی مرگ رو از زبان شاعرهای معاصر بازگو می‌کنه، از زمانی که سایه حضور کمرنگ مرگ مسجل تر میشه تا ریزش آهسته آوار.

هرچقدر ایده پردازی راجع به مرگ می‌تونه رنگ خیال و فلسفه پردازی بگیره مواجه باهاش یک مسیر ساده داره. شعر که همیشه روایتگر منحصربه‌فرد ترین لطافت های شاعر بوده در مواجه با مرگ تبدیل به یک ابزار بدوی و مشترک برای گذر از بحران شده، چیزی شبیه گریه. همه شعرها ساده و بازگوکننده اتفاقات روزمره هستن، بدون کمترین تکلف و صناعت شعری. انگار ثبت دقیق وقایع، رنجها و هرچیزی مربوط به ازدست رفته تلاشی برای زنده نگه داشتنش محسوب میشه.

[behsforensics]

Cutting is for Last Days
By Donald Hall

[H]

This book renews my faith in poetry's pragmatism. Love as impetus is questionable, but loss so very clear.

Alas! that all we loved of him should be,
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators? Great and mean
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.
-stanza 21 of Shelley's "Adonais"

Also loved Carolyn Kizer's "The Great Blue Heron."

[Cami]

I didn't get through every one of these fantastic poems, it is a wonderful (and huge!) collection centering around death, bereavement, etc. I think these are especially poinant because there are some intense feelings surrounding the loss of human life, especially those we love.
I'd recommend them when your NOT feeling blue.

[David]

This was my text book for a third-year course devoted to studying elegies, and I found it an invaluable source; our professor couldn't have chosen more wisely. It has everything from the Classical to the most contemporary elegies, and it is organized very well.

[Rachel]

This is an excellent subject-based anthology--kind of a history of sorrow.

[Vivienne Strauss]

beautiful collection, must buy a copy for myself