Love and Death: Elegies for children by Ben Jonson, Anne Bradstreet, Geoffrey Hill and Elizabeth Bishop
This episode looks at four poems whose subject would seem to lie beyond words: the death of a child. A defining feature of elegy is the struggle between poetic eloquence and inarticulate grief, and in these works by Ben Jonson, Anne Bradstreet, Geoffrey Hill and Elizabeth Bishop we find that tension at its most acute. Mark and Seamus consider the way each poem deals with the traditional demand of the elegy for consolation, and what happens when the form and language of love poetry subverts elegiac conventions.
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Read the poems here:
Ben Jonson: On My First Son
https://lrb.me/jonsoncrld
Anne Bradstreet:In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet
https://lrb.me/bradstreetcrld
Geoffrey Hill: September Song
https://lrb.me/hillcrld
Elizabeth Bishop: First Death in Nova Scotia
https://lrb.me/bishopcrld
Read more in the LRB:
Blair Worden on Ben Jonson
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n19/blair-worden/the-tribe-of-ben
Blair Worden on puritanism
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n19/blair-worden/the-tribe-of-ben
Colin Burrow in Geoffrey Hill:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n04/colin-burrow/rancorous-old-sod
Helen Vendler on Elizabeth Bishop
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v15/n05/helen-vendler/the-numinous-moose
Next episode:
Two elegies by Thomas Gray:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44299/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44302/ode-on-the-death-of-a-favourite-cat-drowned-in-a-tub-of-goldfishes
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Close Readings
Close Readings is a new multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books. Two contributors explore areas of literature through a selection of key works, providing an introductory grounding like no other. Listen to some episodes for free here, and extracts from our ongoing subscriber-only series.
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RUNNING IN 2025:
'Conversations in Philosophy' with Jonathan Rée and James Wood
'Fiction and the Fantastic' with Marina Warner, Anna Della Subin, Adam Thirlwell and Chloe Aridjis
'Love and Death' with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford
'Novel Approaches' with Clare Bucknell, Thomas Jones and other guests
ALSO INCLUDED IN THE CLOSE READINGS SUBSCRIPTION:
'Among the Ancients' with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones
'Medieval Beginnings' with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley
'The Long and Short' with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry
'Modern-ish Poets: Series 1' with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry
'Among the Ancients II' with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones
'On Satire' with Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell
'Human Conditions' with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards
'Political Poems' with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry
'Medieval LOLs' with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley
Get in touch: [email protected]
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