[Nausheen Eusuf]

A beautiful, heartbreaking elegy by Rhina Espaillat on the Rattle website today: here's the link. So many echoes here, too -- of Marvell's mower, Wordsworth's "oh the difference to me," etc.

Nausheen

[Gregory Palmerino]

Oh, my...

Thanks for posting that one, Nausheen.

[Susan McLean]

Lovely and moving. Rhina always goes straight to the heart of things. I think it is the quality that makes listeners or readers instantly relate to her, though I also think that, in these times of suspicion of emotion in verse, it has prevented her from getting the recognition she deserves from the larger poetry community. Her work speaks for itself and will continue to do so.

Susan

[Michael Juster]

She's mostly writing Alfred poems these days and I barely have the character to read them. They're so good but so painful.

[Ned Balbo]

Heartbreaking indeed. A deeply moving elegy.

Coincidentally, Jane just forwarded my Baltimore mail, which arrived this morning &, with it, my copy of Robert B. Shaw's A Late Spring, and After, which examines grief and memory after the death of his wife Hilary.

Regarding both: I wish these poems never had to exist, but I'm grateful that they do.

[Douglas G. Brown]

Nausheen,

Thank you for sharing this link to Rhina's very moving poem.

[Terese Coe]

Alfred would love this elegiac beauty, Rhina! And so do I.

Wish I could be at the Newburyport Literary Festival, and am so glad to see that Robert Mezey will be reading as well. It should be a gala occasion!

Love to you and everyone!

[Rob Wright]

Let me join in the praise of this wonderful and moving poem, Rhina.

Looking at the line-up, I'll be sorry to miss Newburyport. Maybe next time.

RobW

[Catherine Chandler]

The elegantly simple and cutting trimeter (one can hear those shears), the plainspoken language (especially those last two devastating lines), and the rhymes that weave in and out of the three stanzas like those rampant creepers and tendrils, all come together in this gorgeous remembrance. Jennifer is right. The poem is sublime.