Elegy: Poems

by Mary Jo Bang

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Editorial Reviews
Product Description

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 brings the dead back to life. Within these intimate and personal poems is a persistently urgent, and deeply touching, examination of grief itself.

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review: 4 out of 5 stars

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2 out of 5 stars

Fell short of expectations, 2008-10-05
I didn't enjoy this book, and I was excited to read it. It had gotten a great review, but I cannot agree with that reviewer. Maybe I enjoy more traditional poetry. I know she wrote it about her deceased son, but only a few poems seemed to be "talking" to him, or about him.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

A profoundly wonderful work, 2008-09-23
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.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4 out of 5 stars

wonderfully evocative poems, 2008-07-07
I love these dark brooding pain addled poems. Art should illuminate the human condition, it is in the illumination that the experience painful or pleasant is transcended.

I was a little distracted by the punctuation I would have chosen to do it differently as it is somewhere between contemporary and post modern style punctuation and maybe it should be decisively one or the other.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

heart-stirring, 2008-07-04
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

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5 out of 5 stars

The fifth collection of poetry by Professor of English Mary Jo Bang, 2007-11-03
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.

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