Lost Loss in American Elegiac Poetry: Tracing Inaccessible Grief from Stevens to Post-9/11

Lost Loss in American Elegiac Poetry explores the cognitive myth-making involved in denied grief and its social and ethical implications, analyzing a range of elegiac poetry that does not neatly align with conventional assumptions about the genre.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 246 pages
Publication date: 15 May 2022
Publisher: Lexington Books

Lost Loss in American Elegiac Poetry: Tracing Inaccessible Grief from Stevens to Post-9/11 delves into the contemporary literary expressions of losses that evade our grasp, exploring the enigmatic concept of "losing" loss and the consequences of disregarding or rendering dispossessory experiences inaccessible. Toshiaki Komura conducts a comprehensive analysis of elegiac poetry that defies conventional notions of the genre, encompassing works such as Wallace Stevens' "The Owl in the Sarcophagus," Sylvia Plath's final poems, Elizabeth Bishop's Geography III, Sharon Olds' The Dead and the Living, Louise Glück's Averno, and poems written in the aftermath of 9/11. Through these poems, Komura uncovers the mechanisms of cognitive myth-making at play in suppressed grief and the societal and ethical ramifications of such unacknowledged sorrow. Engaging with a diverse range of philosophical, psychoanalytic, and psychological theories, Lost Loss in American Elegiac Poetry elucidates how poetry shapes the ambiguous melancholy of unrecognized loss and the potential phantom effects these equivocal grieving experiences may yield.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781793612649