C. Dale Young: Anatomy of the Contemporary Elegy (July 2005)

How has the elegy remained relevant to contemporary writers? C. Dale Young explores how the form has changed over time; for instance, once restricted in its subject to a man of stature, the elegy can now be directed toward anyone, including someone anonymous. Young looks at examples by Elizabeth Bishop, Donald Justice, Carl Phillips and Debora Greger to examine the ways in which these poems rework the form, grounding us in particulars and producing various kinds of distance from their subjects of grief and loss.