The Penguin Book of Elegy

About the book

The Penguin Book of Elegy by Andrew Motion is a poetry collection for adult readers.

The comprehensive guide to a deeply human tradition of memory, mourning and consolation Elegy is among the world's oldest forms of literature. Born in Ancient Greece, practised by the Romans, revitalized by the poets of the Renaissance and continuing down to the present day, it speaks eloquently and affectingly of the experience of loss and the yearning for consolation.

It gives shape and meaning to memories too painful to contemplate, 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, from its Classical roots in the work of Theocritus, Virgil and Ovid down to modern compositions exploring personal tragedy and collective grief by such celebrated voices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, Terrance Hayes and Alice Oswald.

Delivery & pickup: Available from Whimsy and Wonder with New Zealand delivery or Christchurch pickup.