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. Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://lrb.me/applecrld In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/closereadingsld 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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.