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
Table of Content
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
About the author
Peter Gizzi is the winner of the 2024 T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for his book Fierce Elegy. He is author of many collections of poetry, including Now It’s Dark (2020), Archeophonics (2016), a finalist for the National Book Award, Threshold Songs (2011), and In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987–2011 (2014), a finalist for the LA Times Book Award. He has also published several limited-edition chapbooks, folios, and artist books. Marjorie Perloff has called him ‘a master of the mot juste and of sound structure;’ Robert Creeley, ‘one of the most exceptional poets of his generation.’ Adrienne Rich has said ‘his disturbing lyricism is like no other;’ and John Ashbery thought him ‘the most exciting new poet to come along in quite a while.’ He lives in Holyoke, MA.
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