Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort this week as we continue to celebrate National Poetry Month, we’ve explored Kara Dorris’s Writing the Self-Elegy: The Past is Not Disappearing Ink, which officially releases from SIU Press on May 16th.
Within the lyrical frame of a self-elegy, multiple versions of the self can coexist—wise and naïve, angry and resigned—as well as multiple timelines. Self-elegies explore the potential selves that could have been created by different decisions, and they give the poet a chance to reach back in time and address previous selves—to give advice or warning or consolation to the version of that person who needed to hear it the most. Instead of death, self-elegies focus on loss, and they give those who write them the chance to be honest and vulnerable through their self-reflection. Writing the Self-Elegy: The Past is Not Disappearing Ink features the work of twenty-eight poets, including Stephanie Heit, who share these aching and personal reflections along with writing prompts sure to inspire readers to pen their own self-elegies.