How to Write an Elegy

An elegy is a poem to memorialize someone beloved or respected who is deceased. One of the most famous elegys ever written is Walt Whitman's elegy for Abraham Lincoln entitled "O Captain! My Captain!" In English literature, this type of poem usually contains specific lyric essentials. When writing your own elegy, include the elements in the steps below to craft a moving and personal tribute.

Instructions

1. Describe when and why you are writing the poem. Explain where you, the author, are now and why you are looking back. Depict your relationship with the deceased. Pastoral references, like portraying the author and departed one as shepherds, are commonly used in an elegy as metaphors for the relationship.

2. Explain how the person died and express not just grief, but anger and astonishment that the person has passed. Include the cause of the death. Let the means of death inspire the poem's imagery; for example, if the person drowned, incorporate the sea as a character or symbol.

3. Include attempts to deny the reality of the person's death or resurrect the person. Eventually accept of the unavoidability of the loss.

4. Reflect on how the person's death has impacted the world. Ask how the world can go on without this person. Imagine what this person could have contributed that will never be fulfilled.

5. Meditate on the nature and inevitability of death within the cycle of life. Conclude the elegy with a degree of comfort and reassurance in the certainty of how life progresses and a hope of the afterlife.

Resources

• Read famous (and not so famous) elegies at Poem Hunter.
• Send email poems to friends and family from Passions in Poetry.
• Purchase classic literature and poetry from Bartleby.