The Penguin Book of Elegy

Poems of Memory, Mourning and Consolation

Prof Stephen Regan, Andrew Motion

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English

Penguin
20 February 2024

The comprehensive guide to a deeply human tradition of memory, mourning and consolation

Elegy is among the world's oldest forms of literature- a continuous poetic tradition which stretches back beyond the time of Virgil and Horace to Ancient Greece, speaking eloquently and movingly of the experience of loss and the yearning for consolation. In perhaps the purest instance of art's fundamental 'impulse to preserve' (Philip Larkin), it gives shape and meaning to memories too painful to contemplate for long, 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, selecting the best and most significant poems and poets from the Classical roots of elegy, and from its Renaissance revival down to the present day. They show how this remarkably resilient and versatile form has continued to adapt itself even as society and religious belief have shifted around it, with striking achievements in the work of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poets as different as Marianne Moore, Dylan Thomas, Denise Riley and Gwendolyn Brooks.

The result is the only comprehensive anthology of its kind now available in the English language. The Penguin Book of Elegy is itself a work of preservation - and a profound and moving catalogue of the fundamentally human urges to remember and honour the dead, and give comfort to those who survive them.

By: Prof Stephen Regan, Andrew Motion
Imprint: Penguin
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 162mm, Spine: 44mm
Weight: 1.150kg
ISBN: 9780241269602
ISBN 10: 0241269601
Pages: 512
Publication Date: 20 February 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Andrew Motion (Author) Andrew Motion's most recent collection of poetry is Essex Clay. He was poet laureate from 1999 to 2009, served for some years as Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London, and is now Homewood Professor of the Arts at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Stephen Regan (Author) Stephen Regan has taught at Royal Holloway, University of London; Ruskin College, Oxford; Harvard University; and Durham University, where he is now Director of the Centre for Poetry and Poetics. His books include Irish Writing: An Anthology of Irish Literature in English 1789-1939 (2004) and The Sonnet (2019).

Reviews for The Penguin Book of Elegy: Poems of Memory, Mourning and Consolation

If you have any weakness for poetry at all this book will draw you in then devastate you -- Susie Goldsbrough * The Times * Poignant … memorable … impressively fresh and compelling ... the reader is bound to come away from a collection like this asking what the poetry of lament might help to teach us about the task of grieving for the threatened loss of an entire world -- Rowan Williams * New Statesman * A magnificent reminder of the permanence of love -- Bel Mooney * Daily Mail * The giants of the genre are well presented … there are discoveries aplenty … so monumental is this anthology that one can imagine it pillowing a knight’s head on an elaborately carved marble tomb -- Anthony Gardner * Tablet * Funny, angry and provocative … the anthology is a success ... the editors’ introduction is excellent – clear, informative and thought-provoking -- Sean O’Brien * Telegraph *