Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog
    Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog
    Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog
    Ebook109 pages1 hour

    Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog

    By Paul Monette

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Paul Monette’s fierce and arresting collection of poems on the death of his partner from AIDS

    Following his partner Roger Horwitz’s death from AIDS in 1986, Paul Monette threw himself into these elegies. Writing them, he says, “quite literally kept me alive.” Both beautifully written and deeply affecting, every poem is full of anger, sorrow, tenderness, and a palpable sense of grief. With graceful language and emotional acuity, Paul Monette captures the enormity of a loss that ravaged a generation. But even more than they are about tragedy, these poems are about love. Each moving line is full of love for one who is no longer there, but whose presence is still achingly felt at every turn. Love Alone is remarkable for its honesty, its passion, and its depth.

    This ebook features an illustrated biography of Paul Monette including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the Paul Monette papers of the UCLA Library Special Collections.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateMar 25, 2014
    ISBN9781480473782
    Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog
    Author

    Paul Monette

    Paul Monette (1945–1995) was an author, poet, and gay rights activist. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Yale University, he moved with his partner Roger Horwitz to Los Angeles in 1978 and became involved in the gay rights movement. Monette’s writing captures the sense of heartbreak and loss at the center of the AIDS crisis. His first novel, Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll, was published in 1978, and he went on to write several more works of fiction, poetry, and memoir. Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, the tender account of his partner’s battle with the disease, earned him both PEN Center West and Lambda literary awards. In 1992, Monette won the National Book Award in Nonfiction for Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, an autobiography detailing his early life and his struggle with his sexuality. Written as a classic coming-of-age story, Becoming a Man became a seminal coming-out story. In 1995, Monette founded the Monette-Horwitz Trust, which honors individuals and organizations working to combat homophobia. Monette died in his home in West Hollywood in 1995 of complications from AIDS.

    Read more from Paul Monette

    Related to Love Alone

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      7 Books to Read on World AIDS Day

      Nov 26, 2019

      So Lucky, by award-winning author Nicola Griffith, is a fascinatingly intense, semiautobiographical novel about a woman facing down her demons. The profoundly personal narrative reads much like a memoir, and readers can’t help but empathize with prot

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Hell Of Bipolar Disorder

      Aug 7, 2020

      KANYE West’s recent meltdown has thrown the issue of bipolar disorder into the spotlight again. The rapper, whose chaotic rally to launch his campaign for the US presidency was followed by a flurry of bizarre tweets and wild accusations, has the cond

      4 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: November 2020

      Nov 5, 2020

      Stop obsessively refreshing the New York Times's elections page, and check out these new books of poetry by Alice Quinn, Margaret Atwood, Yi Lei, Karina Borowicz, Valzhyna Mort, and Paul Celan. The post Must-Read Poetry: November 2020 appeared first

      6 min read

    • Article

      A History And Theory Of The Line In English Language Poetry

      Jul 1, 2022

      For me, and for generations of US readers before me, poetry has been defined by the appearance of the line break on the page, that ragged righthand margin signaling that something is at work in the arrangement of the words on paper beyond mere transc

      59 min read

    • Article

      Military Bearing

      Feb 4, 2021

      Military Bearing
      4 min read

    • Article

      You’ll Need Me When They’re Gone: The Poems We Reach For in Grief

      Nov 14, 2019

      I am all too aware of the place contemporary poetry occupies for most people: They reach for poems when they’re in love or when they’re coping with death. The post You’ll Need Me When They’re Gone: The Poems We Reach For in Grief appeared first on Th

      9 min read

    • Article

      Try A Triversen

      Jul 1, 2021

      Many classic poetry forms exist in a number of variants, as anyone who thinks that a sonnet’s a single entity soon learns. The same is true of more modern forms. The triversen originated in the twentieth century, and has variants that include the num

      3 min read

    • Article

      Weaving A Web With Words

      Nov 4, 2021

      Weaving A Web With Words
      4 min read

    • Article

      Wide Open Wordsmiths

      May 5, 2022

      Wide Open Wordsmiths
      5 min read

    • Article

      Three Times Rhyme

      Sep 7, 2023

      The terza rima is a particularly charming Italian verse form that sits neatly in any poet’s repertoire of styles, and is the form required for our next Writing Magazine competition. Meaning third rhyme, this chain-rhymed piece interweaves its chiming

      3 min read

    • Article

      Inhabiting A Moment

      Mar 13, 2022

      In Actions and Travels you include about 100 of the “poems I love and what it is I love about them” along with a broad range of poets from around the world, younger local ones such as Hera Lindsay Bird and Tayi Tibble, and plenty of dead ones such as

      7 min read

    • Article

      The American Poetry Review At 50

      Nov 1, 2022

      The American Poetry Review At 50
      21 min read

    • Article

      Read In Tooth And Claw

      Apr 7, 2022

      Read In Tooth And Claw
      4 min read

    • Article

      Poetic Asides

      Feb 13, 2023

      Poetic Asides
      2 min read

    • Article

      On A Better Life By Randall Mann

      Mar 1, 2022

      In the first and title poem of A Better Life (Persea Books, 2021), Randall Mann looks back incredulous at having ever arrived at the age of thirty, a milestone now “fourteen years” in his past. Having survived longer than he might have imagined, Mann

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Poetry No. 115

      Dec 5, 2023

      The Art of Poetry No. 115
      27 min read

    • Article

      What Is a Poem?

      Nov 25, 2013

      When I used to ask students what a poem is, I would get answers like “a painting in words,” or “a medium for self-expression,” or “a song that rhymes and displays beauty.” None of these answers ever really satisfied me, or them, and so for a while I

      8 min read

    • Article

      Lingering Memories

      Aug 5, 2021

      Lingering Memories
      4 min read

    • Article

      Striking The Right Notes

      May 5, 2022

      Sir Edward Elgar’s music haunts the reeds, the bracken, willows, bluebells, birch and gorse of Malvern’s hills and Severn’s silted shore, the land where it was made and it belongs. And you as well may pluck tunes from the air: you only need to listen

      4 min read

    • Article

      Poets On Board

      Jan 4, 2024

      Poems on the theme of exploration converged in search of a prize in the competition honouring Venetian explorer Marco Polo. The traveller – who opened up the world of central Asia, explored the Silk Road, and lived a quarter of his life in China – re

      4 min read

    • Article

      On Memory and Literature

      Jun 30, 2021

      Now we're all possessors of personal supercomputers that can instantly connect us to whole libraries — there can seem little sense to make iambs and trochees part of one's soul. The post On Memory and Literature appeared first on The Millions.

      18 min read

    • Article

      Dirty Bertie

      Aug 3, 2023

      Dirty Bertie
      3 min read

    • Article

      Got The Blues

      Jun 3, 2021

      Ekphrastic poetry, inspired by a work of art, is enthralling to write and intriguing to read. It takes a second bite at the cherry of inspiration, with the additional angle of interpretation. If you’ve enjoyed Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn, Anne Sexton

      4 min read

    • Article

      Regarding the Em Dash

      Jan 4, 2018

      Punctuation, largely invisible and insignificant for normal people, as it should be, is a highly personal matter for writers.  Periods, commas, colons, semi-colons:  in their use or non-use and in their order and placement, can represent elaboration,

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Love Alone

    4.5/5

    28 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Written after his lover Roger Horwitz, passed away from complications from the AIDS virus, Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog is a moving collection of poems by Paul Monette. He dedicates these to Roger.Reviewing poetry is difficult, I think either you enjoy reading the poems and they resonate or, they just don't strike a chord. Poetry is so subjective, I think that is why I enjoy it so much. Everyone sees it differently and can take different things from it.I enjoyed this sad collection and I found this to be a beautiful tribute by Monette for the love of his life. The way Monette shares his feelings through poetry in an intense and honest way makes this for an emotional read. He remembers Roger as he shares not only his pain and his loss, but also his love for his partner. It's really moving. And that is what real love is all about, you never stop loving someone, even when they are gone."I promise you all the last gardenias Rogbut they can't go on like this they've stopped they knowthe only garden we'll ever be is us"There are photos at the end and I always find that a nice touch, as it makes reading something like this even more real. This was a lovely tribute.disclaimer: I received my free review copy of Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies for Rog by Paul Monette via NetGalley.This review is my honest opinion. I did not receive any type of compensation for reading and reviewing this book. While I receive free books from publishers and authors, such as this one, I am under no obligation to write a positive review.
    • 4/5
      These poems are raw and real. Written directly after the loss of a loved one of a disease that slowly stripped the man he loved away and replaced him with only memories. I'm not a poetry reader but these are some of the most powerfully written words I've ever read. Anyone who's ever lost someone will find solice in these words.

    Book preview

    Love Alone - Paul Monette

    Preface

    Above all I am not concerned with poetry.

    My subject is War, and the pity of War.

    The poetry is in the pity.

    —WILFRED OWEN, 1918

    Wilfred Owen’s Preface to the poems he wrote in 1917 and 1918 is the best caution I know against beauty and eloquence. He begs us not to read his anthem for the doomed youth of his generation as a decorous celebration of heroes. Decorum is the contemptible pose of the politicians and preachers, the hypocrite slime whose grinning hatred slicks this dying land like rotten morning dew. I do not presume on the nightmare of Owen’s war—may the boys of Flanders be spared all comparison—and I don’t pretend to have written the anthem of my people. But I would rather have this volume filed under AIDS than under Poetry, because if these words speak to anyone they are for those who are mad with loss, to let them know they are not alone.

    Roger Horwitz, my beloved friend, died on 22 October 1986, after nineteen months of fighting the ravages of AIDS. He was forty-four years old, the happiest man I ever knew. He fought with an immensity of spirit that transfigured us who loved him. On his grave are Plato’s last words on Socrates: the wisest and justest and best. Rog had a constitutional aversion to bullshit and was incapable of being unkind. Though he held two degrees from Harvard—a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and a law degree—he made no show of it. The only thing he ever bragged about were his three bohemian years in Paris in his early twenties, and he didn’t so much boast of them as endlessly give them away.

    These elegies were written during the five months after he died, one right after the other, with hardly a half day’s pause between. Writing them quite literally kept me alive, for the only time I wasn’t wailing and trembling was when I was hammering at these poems. I have let them stand as raw as they came. But because several friends have wished for a few commas or a stanza break here and there, I feel I should make a comment on their form. I don’t mean them to be impregnable, though I admit I want them to allow no escape, like a hospital room, or indeed a mortal illness.

    In the summer of 1984 Roger and I were in Greece together, and for both of us it was a peak experience that left us dazed and slightly giddy. We’d been together for ten years, and life was very sweet. On the high bluff of ancient Thera, looking out across the southern Aegean toward Africa, my hand grazed a white marble block covered edge to edge with Greek characters, line after precise line. The marble was tilted face up to the weather, its message slowly eroding in the rain. I hope somebody’s recorded all this, I said, realizing with a dull thrill of helplessness that this was the record, right here on this stone.

    When I began to write about AIDS during Roger’s illness, I wanted a form that would move with breathless speed, so I could scream if I wanted and rattle on and empty my Uzi into the air. The marbles of Greece kept coming back to mind. By the time Roger died the form was set—not quite marble, not quite Greek—but it was in my head that if only a fragment remained in the future, to fade in the sulfurous rain, it would say how much I loved him and how terrible was the

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1