The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx
By Tara Bergin
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About this ebook
Tara Bergin
Tara Bergin is an Irish poet. Her first collection, This is Yarrow (2013), won the Seamus Heaney Prize for Poetry, and the Shine/Strong Award for best first collection by an Irish author. She received an Arts Council Ireland Literature Bursary to write her second collection, The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx (2017), which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes, and chosen as Best Poetry Book of the year by The Times and The Irish Times. She now lives in the North of England.
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Book preview
The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx - Tara Bergin
The
Tragic Death
of Eleanor Marx
TARA BERGIN
for my parents and my brother
What is more precise than precision? Illusion.
Marianne Moore
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
The True Story of Eleanor Marx
The True Story of Eleanor Marx in Ten Parts
The Giving Away of Emma Bovary by Several Hands
Who is He?
Are You Looking?
In Memory of My Lack of Feelings
Answer to a Questionnaire
To Dream of Horses
The Hairdresser
Expensive Sweetheart
The Workmen
Ode to the Microphone
Strange Courtship
Strange Commute
The Hospital Porter
A Rented Room above the Registry Office
Joseph’s Palms
Notes from the Arboretum
The Stenographer
Faithful Henry
Susie’s Secret
Tamer and Lion
Renting Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom by the Hour
Lorraine
Dying
‘If I Love One I Can’t Love Two’
Painter My Valentine
Bachmann’s Warbler
Sweet Isis
Making Robert Learn Like Susan
Portrait of a Writer
Drama Lessons for Young Girls
Tamer and Hawk
Talking to Anne-Marie after the American Election
Diary Entry, Easter Monday, Suicide Day
Appointment with Jane Austen
The Hunchback in Golden Swan Park
Mask
Poem in Which I Am Samson and Also Delilah
Nine Footnotes
On Not Picking Mushrooms with a Famous Writer
Insomnia
The Method
Rehearsing Strindberg
The Sad Tale of Hansel and Gretel
Wedding Cake Decorations
Secret Resignation
If / Then
Notes from the Sanatorium
‘Oh my little Eleanor…’
Karl Marx’s Daughters Play on the Ouija Board
The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx
Bride and Moth
Notes
Acknowledgements
Also by Tara Bergin from Carcanet Press
Copyright
The True Story of Eleanor Marx
I’m not going to tell you anything
That my psychoanalyst wouldn’t tell you.
He too speaks in riddles.
He too proclaims we are all victims
Of our insurrections.
I will not stand up to him.
There are ten parts to the story…
The True Story of Eleanor Marx in Ten Parts
1.
Eleanor of the eight-hour day
Gets betrayed by Edward of the two faces.
She orders: chloroform, with just some traces
Of prussic acid – blue – a beautiful imitation.
2.
She says it’s for the dog but she is the dog.
3.
The Housekeeper finds her dressed in white.
It’s not her bridal dress, she’s not a bride.
It’s from her childhood. She lies as if asleep.
She has strangely purple cheeks.
4.
In her ‘white muslin dress’ she is laid out.
5.
The Coroner is exasperated with feeble Edward.
CORONER
Was the deceased your wife?
EDWARD
Legally?
CORONER
Were you married to the deceased?
EDWARD
Not legally.
CORONER
What was her age?
EDWARD
Forty.
(She was forty-three.)
6.
On Tuesday:
Fire –
But the Phoenix,
God of Suicide,
Doesn’t rise.
And Edward doesn’t claim her
Because now he has a real wife.
7.
So