Thoughts on taking leave …

… Elegy Season | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… Possessed by Memory really is a kind of valediction. In the first sentence of his first chapter, Bloom writes, “As I near the end of my eighties, I am aware of being in the elegy season.” This book dwells in the elegy season from its first to its last page, and it concerns itself throughout with ends: the end of friendships (Bloom mentions dozens of poets and critics whom he has loved and lost) and the end of Bloom’s own life. Many of the book’s chapters are short, more brief reflection than sustained argument, and hardly a chapter goes by without an intimation of Bloom’s own mortality: “I lose old friends every month or so now. Consolation is difficult to find, but elegiac poetry helps.”