The Empty Bed

by Hadas, Rachel

• ISBN13: 9780819512253
• ISBN10: 0819512257
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-03-01
• Publisher: Wesleyan Univ Pr

Summary

Rachel Hadas's The Empty Bed takes an unflinching look at the loss of friends to AIDS and cancer, and commemorates the despair and rage of those left to grieve for the dead. Between 1991 and 1993, five of the poets with whom Hadas had worked at Gay Men's Health Crisis died, and in the midst of these deaths came that of the poet's mother. Written with the energy of desperation, the central section of The Empty Bed is devoted to a series of elegies -- private but also public laments almost secretly empowered by their formal schemes. The elegies are embraced by preparatory meditations on boundaries and thresholds; wise and passionate, these poems celebrate the consolations of friendship and of art. The collection is infused with a growing certainty that although the emptiness left by the deaths of loved ones can never be filled, it can be haloed and commemorated, and in that sense mitigated, by language.

Author Biography

Rachel Hadas is Professor of English at Rutgers University. Her many books include Indelible (2001), Halfway Down the Hall: New and Selected Poems (1998), Living in Time (1990), Pass It On (1989), and A Son From Sleep (1987).

Table of Contents

Faultlines	p. 3
Lunch the Day after Thanksgiving	p. 4
Alternatives	p. 6
Spring	p. 7
April Heat	p. 8
Lower Level, Room EE	p. 9
Through a Glass	p. 10
The End of the Tunnel	p. 12
The House beside the Sea	p. 14
Chiasmus	p. 16
Benefit Night, New York City Ballet	p. 17
The Friend	p. 19
Sleepy's Entrance	p. 27
Thank You and Goodbye	p. 28
The Bees of the Invisible	p. 29
Black Wings	p. 31
Coleman 1445	p. 32
The Last Movie	p. 34
The Wolf in the Bed	p. 36
Leftovers	p. 37
Upon My Mother's Death	p. 39
Missing Lines	p. 41
The Changes	p. 44
The Double Legacy	p. 47
Holiday Movies	p. 50
May	p. 52
The Rinse	p. 53
Recoveries	p. 54
Literary Executor	p. 61
Peculiar Sanctity	p. 62
Lullaby	p. 64
Orange	p. 65
Nine Tiles	p. 66
Frieze Advancing	p. 68
Six of One	p. 69
The Hinge	p. 70
Passage	p. 72
Song	p. 73
Arguments of Silence	p. 74
Lullaby II	p. 77
A Glimpse of Simon Verity	p. 78
Mars and Venus	p. 79
Four Lives, Stirring	p. 81
Black Lullaby	p. 83
The Red House	p. 84
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