Poets and Poems: Mischa Willett and “The Elegy Beta”

Poet Mischa Willett is exploring the elegy. And more than exploring it, he’s modernizing it.

You reach a certain age, and you begin to understand why the elegy is an enduring poetic form. Its history stretches as far back as the Greeks and Romans. Typically associated with death and funerals, an elegy can be almost any poem that’s a serious reflection. Traditional elegies (think Thomas Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard”) make full use of rhyming couplets. Contemporary elegies generally drop the rhyme, but they retain the concept of seriousness and solemnity.

The title poem in Willet’s new collection, The Elegy Beta, fits that contemporary understanding. 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Mischa Willett and “Phases”

In his new collection Phases, poet Mischa Willett reaches back to the distant past of classical antiquity and the recent past of old girlfriends and a father recovering from heart surgery, to paintings

and sculpture, to a young child asking about the inequality of large and small cars. And while that sounds like a diverse array of subjects and inspirations, Willett ties these 60 poems together with a few deep, resounding themes and perspectives.

A glance at the table of contents reveals one of those perspectives – the geography of the collection. Willett has structured the poems into nine sections – oceans, lands, seas, and an island. This geography is specific: “Ocean of Storms,” “Sea Has Become Known,” “Land of Heat,” and so on. We navigate this geography, and it is sometimes calm and reflective, and sometimes stormy and disruptive.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.