Peter Gizzi has said that ‘the elegy is a mode that can transform a broken heart in a fierce world into a fierce heart in a broken world.’ For Gizzi, ferocity can be reimagined as vulnerability, bravery and discovery, a braiding of emotional and otherworldly depth, ‘a holding open.’ In Gizzi’s voice joy and sorrow make a complex ecosystem. In their quest for a lyric reality, these poems remind us that elegy is lament but also—as it has been for centuries—a work of love. ‘This new poetry, ‘ Kamau Brathwaite has written about Gizzi, ‘taking such care of temperature—the time & details of the world—meaning the space(s) in which we live—defining love in this way. Writing along the edge. A way of writing about hope.’
[sample poem]
Creely Song
all that is lovely
in words, even
if gone to pieces
all that is lovely
gone, all of it
for love and
autobiography
as if I were
writing this
hello, listen
the plan is
the body and
all of it for love
now in pieces
all that is lovely
echoes still
in life & death
still memory
gardens open
onto windows
lovely, the charm
that mirrors
all that was, all
that is, lovely
in a song
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Findspot Unknown Revisonary • Creeley Song • Notes on Sound And Vision Notre Musique • The Posthumous Life of Childhood • I Am Who Sent Me • Nimbus • Romanticism • Roxy Music • Of the Air • Ecstatic Joy and Its Variants • Spooky Action • Dissociadelic • But The Heart in a Sense Is Far From Me Floating Out There • Consider the Wound • Acknowledgments