Summary: An elegy is a poem attributed to the death of someone that expresses the sadness of their passing. Write an elegy that discusses the broad sense of life and death with tips from a credentialed teacher in this free video on writing lessons.
Laura Minnigerode is a writing instructor and former classroom teacher. Her teaching experience includes public and private schools, as well as writing workshops for adults and...read more
"Hi, I'm Laura from youngwritersworkshops.com, and I'm going to talk about, how to write an elegy. And elegy is a poem attribute to someone who has died that expresses sadness at the loss of this person. One of the most famous elegies is, "o captain! my captain!" written by Walt Whitman, written about the death of Abraham Lincoln. To start an elegy, you want to use some kind of metaphor or a term to depict your relationship to the person. One common example is a shepherd and the sheep who are lost without their shepherd. Discuss some ideas about life and death in a broader sense, depicting how much loss has been incurred by the loss of this person, how sadness and grief have overcome the world because of the loss of this person. You'll also want to talk more about your sadness and your grief, and your efforts to deny that this person is actually gone. An elegy can be a way to express all of these feeling in a really lyrical form. To sum up, try an elegy, use a metaphor to depict your relationship with this person, sum up the grief and the loss that you feel, and use the elegy as a meditation on the cycle of life and death. And that's how to write an elegy."
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