The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx

Tara Bergin

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781784103804
• eBook ISBN: 9781784103811
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize.

A 2017 Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

Shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best Collection 2017.

Shortlisted for the 2018 Irish Times Poetry Now Award.

Features the poem 'Bride and Moth', shortlisted for the 2017 Listowel Writers' Week Irish Poem of the Year Award

Following her 2013 debut This is Yarrow (winner of the Seamus Heaney Prize and the Shine / Strong Award), Tara Bergin returns with her second collection, The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx. The poems draw on folksong, fairytale and theatrical monologue as Bergin explores the alluring and sometimes tragic consequences of translation. When she committed suicide in 1898, Eleanor Marx (daughter of Karl Marx, pioneering sociologist, and translator of Flaubert's Madame Bovary ) imitated Flaubert's heroine, Emma. Both women, in their own ways, died passionate deaths, and Bergin's poems are concerned with intense love, intense grief. With a sing-song rhythm and dark humour, they play off the natural theatricality of great lovers, great writers and great readers who, like the fancy-dressed children in 'Mask', are both 'themselves and strangers'. 'That s all they wanted.'

Contents

1. Title Page
2. Dedication
3. Epigraph
   
4. The True Story of Eleanor Marx
5. The True Story of Eleanor Marx in Ten Parts
6. The Giving Away of Emma Bovary by Several Hands
7. Who is He?
8. Are You Looking?
9. In Memory of My Lack of Feelings
10. Answer to a Questionnaire
11. To Dream of Horses
12. The Hairdresser
13. Expensive Sweetheart
14. The Workmen
15. Ode to the Microphone
16. Strange Courtship
17. Strange Commute
18. The Hospital Porter
19. A Rented Room above the Registry Office
20. Joseph’s Palms
21. Notes from the Arboretum
22. The Stenographer
23. Faithful Henry
24. Susie’s Secret
25. Tamer and Lion
26. Renting Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom by the Hour
27. Lorraine
28. Dying
29. ‘If I Love One I Can’t Love Two’
30. Painter My Valentine
31. Bachmann’s Warbler
32. Sweet Isis
33. Making Robert Learn Like Susan
34. Portrait of a Writer
35. Drama Lessons for Young Girls
36. Tamer and Hawk
37. Talking to Anne-Marie after the American Election
38. Diary ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• The True Story of Eleanor Marx
• The True Story of Eleanor Marx in Ten Parts
• The Giving Away of Emma Bovary by Several Hands
• Who Is He?
• Are You Looking?
• In Memory of My Lack of Feelings
• Answer to a Questionnaire
• To Dream of Horses
• The Hairdresser
• Expensive Sweetheart
• The Workmen
• Ode to the Microphone
• Strange Courtship
• Strange Commute
• The Hospital Porter
• A Rented Room above the Registry Office
• Joseph’s Palms
• Notes from the Arboretum
• The Stenographer
• Faithful Henry
• Susie’s Secret
• Tamer and Lion
• Renting Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom by the Hour
• Lorraine
• Dying
• ‘If I Love One I Can’t Love Two’
• Painter My Valentine
• Bachmann’s Warbler
• Sweet Isis
• Making Robert Learn Like Susan
• Portrait of a Writer
• Drama Lessons for Young Girls
• Tamer and Hawk
• Talking to Anne-Marie after the American Election
• Diary Entry, Easter Monday, Suicide Day
• Appointment with Jane Austen
• The Hunchback in Golden Swan Park
• Mask
• Poem in Which I Am Samson and Also Delilah
• Nine Footnotes
• On Not Picking Mushrooms with a Famous Writer
• Insomnia
• The Method
• Rehearsing Strindberg
• The Sad Tale of Hansel and Gretel
• Wedding Cake Decorations
• Secret Resignation
• If / Then
• Notes from the Sanatorium
• ‘Oh My Little Eleanor…’
• Karl Marx’s Daughters Play on the Ouija Board
• The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx
• Bride and Moth
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• Also by Tara Bergin from Carcanet Press
• Copyright