Inventions of Farewell collects English language poems of mourning from the late Middle Ages to the present. Aesthetic assumptions and poetic styles have altered over the centuries, yet the great and often terrifying themes of time, change, age, and death are timeless. The poems here-from Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Edna St. Vincent Millay to Sharon Olds, Stanley Kunitz, and W. S. Merwin-trace the trajectory of grief, but they also illustrate how the deepest sorrow has produced countless poignant and resonant works of art-words that can aid us as we struggle with our own farewells.

About the Author
Sandra M. Gilbert is a distinguished literary critic and poet. Together with Susan Gubar, she was awarded the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the NBCC. She lives in Berkeley, California. Arguably America's greatest poet, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) published fewer than a dozen of her eighteen hundred poems during her lifetime. Wallace Stevens was an American poet and lawyer. Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892-1950, was an American lyrical poet and playwright. She is the author of Renascence and Other Poems. She is known by the pseudonym Nancy Boyd. Stanley Kunitz, much-honored poet, was cofounder of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and of Poets House in New York City. He died in 2006.


Book Information
ISBN 9780393049725
Author Sandra M. Gilbert
Format Hardback
Page Count 480
Imprint WW Norton & Co
Publisher WW Norton & Co
Weight(grams) 745g
Dimensions(mm) 218mm * 152mm * 38mm