Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog [Paperback]

Paul Monette (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 1988

An eighteen-poem cycle on the death of his lover from AIDS emphasizes the power of love and its survival through pain and anger, and the tragedy and magnitude of a terrifying twist of fate and its effect on a generation.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Monette, best known for his light novels and movie novelizations, is also a gifted poet who has published intermittently since 1971. His third book of poems is occasioned by the death of his lover, Roger Horwitz, of AIDS in 1986. Written "for those who are mad with loss," it stands apart from its predecessors, and indeed from most contemporary poetry, in both intent and execution. The poems use remembered episodes to celebrate "that two men ceased to be single," but more often ride express the rage felt during Rog's dying and the ache of being the remaining half of a couple. Though I do not share his worship of The Gay Couple, and in fact find it irritating, this book will be a balm for those who see AIDS primarily as a deadly assault on an already besieged army of lovers. Rob Schmeider, Boston
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 64 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's (November 15, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312026021
• ISBN-13: 978-0312026028
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #664,141 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #26 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Gay

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Soul enhancing proof of love in a poetry of death., December 3, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog (Hardcover)

This is a book to carry with you. Unfortunately I did, and lost it. The effort I've put into trying to get another copy is testament to the power and eloquence of the eighteen poems it contains. This work juxtaposes the power of love and the raveges of death with humbling clraity and emotion. I used it to uplift me when I lost faith in life, and inspire me when I lost direction in my work.

Mr Monette says in his preface that it was written almost without pause in the months after his lover's death. The immediacy of his grief, the violence in his anger and the vivid importance of his memories take you with terryfying force into those months. And when you are there, you cannot help but feel the anger and injustice and, overwhelmingly, feel the love that he and Roger shared.

I sound sycophantic. I know. But this book puts me in a difficult position becuse it is truly how I feel. When promised love goes wrong, I read these poems, always alone and late at night. When I can't remember why I spend my days thinking up ways to stop more gay men becomming infected with HIV, I read these poems to remind me what happens when people are ignored.

I'm hoping a copy can be found to replace the one I lost.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars breathless poems, November 16, 2000

By 

Heather Booth (Kalamazoo, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog (Paperback)

It is worth buying the book simply for the first poem, "Here". Each of the pieces moves at a fever pitch, leaving the reader unable to pause even for breath, until the poem ends and leaves you holding the book, wanting more, but needing a break, unable to turn the page. They wear you out reading them, but in the best way possible. Monette documents the death of his partner, and the knowledge of his own advancing illness, and he does so in a way that takes you with him : you feel the urgency, pain, sadness, beauty, love, and preciousness of life right along with the poet. Love Alone isn't poems that just tell you things. It puts them in your hands.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely mind-blowing, April 22, 2006

By 

Andrea Love "A human being." (Seattle. Washington. Canadia. North America. Earth. Milky Way Galaxy. Universe.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog (Paperback)

I had no idea that a simple page of unpunctuated emotion could grind at your heart and make you cry the way this does, easily. It is raw, angry, despairing and loving all at once, you feel as if the poems are Monette's one strand of hope, a lifeline desperately connecting him to existence in the months after Roger's death. These literally take your breath away, they are a rollercoaster of heartbreak and desperation, grabbing some vital organ inside of you and not letting go until the poem's been read. I would give these six, seven, twenty three stars if I could, because this is the purpose of literature, to preserve human emotion and experience. These poems do that exquisitely.