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    Talking to the Dead
    Talking to the Dead
    Talking to the Dead
    Ebook64 pages32 minutes

    Talking to the Dead

    By Elaine Feinstein

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    About this ebook

    A tender work of mourning, this poetry collection—owing to the remembered words of a much-loved husband—recalls the author's life before marriage and considers a future after her husband's death. Imagining that future, she confronts the myths of an afterlife, a belief in God, her debts to other poets, and her dependence on friends and children. At the center of these beautiful lyrics—written with complete control of rhythm and tone—it is a man, rather than grief, that appears clearly.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateApr 1, 2007
    ISBN9781847778352
    Talking to the Dead
    Author

    Elaine Feinstein

    Elaine Feinstein read English at Cambridge, and lived there for a quarter of a century with her husband and three children, supervising undergraduates and writing poems, novels and plays, as well as reviews for London newspapers. She has appeared at major festivals across the world and has been translated into most European languages. In 1981 Feinstein was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and later served on its Council. In 1990 she received a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry, and was given an Honorary D.Litt from the University of Leicester. Her novel Mother’s Girl was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize in the same year. Her first novel, The Circle (1970) was longlisted for the ‘lost’ Man Booker prize in 2010. Her five biographies include Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet (2001; 2016), shortlisted for the Marsh Biography Prize; and Anna of all the Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova (2005), which has been translated into twelve languages, including Russian. She has served as a judge for all the major literary awards, and was Chair of the Judges for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1995. She received an Arts Council Award for her work on The Russian Jerusalem (2004).

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      Book preview

      Talking to the Dead - Elaine Feinstein

      Winter

      The clock’s gone back. The shop lights spill

      over the wet street, these broken streaks

      of traffic signals and white headlights fill

      the afternoon. My thoughts are bleak.

      I drive imagining you still at my side,

      wanting to share the film I saw last night,

      – of wartime separations, and the end

      when an old married couple reunite –

      You never did learn to talk and find the way

      at the same time, your voice teases me.

      Well, you’re right, I‘ve missed my turning,

      and smile a moment at the memory,

      always knowing you lie peaceful and curled

      like an embryo under the squelchy ground,

      without a birth to wait for, whirled

      into that darkness where nothing is found.

      Bremerhaven

      Christmas in Bremerhaven. Every twig sheathed

      in transparent ice like tubes of glass, each breath

      steam as it left our lips.

      I did not want to go to the fair.

      You would have liked to poke through toys

      even in freezing rain, and relished the stalls

      of rich cakes, bought some German games,

      but I did not want to be there.

      Then, in a wooden booth where we took shelter,

      my son and I drank glühwein and spoke of you.

      He was still angry about childhood memories,

      and, as he spoke, suddenly, you were there,

      – one-off, sardonic and obstreperous –

      as if we had conjured your hot presence

      to stand for a moment solidly between us,

      before you dissolved back into the air.

      Home

      When was it you took up that second stick,

      and began to walk like a cross country skier?

      Your glide developed its own politics.

      Last July, you were able to stretch over

      like an acrobat, to oil the garden table.

      The patio faced south. It was high summer.

      Coffee and grapefruit was the breakfast ritual,

      or boiled eggs eaten from blue terracotta.

      Our paradise, you called it, like a gîte

      we might have chosen somewhere in Provence.

      Neither of us understood you were in danger.

      Not even

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