A Passing Bell: Ghazals for Tina

A renowned American poet utilizes the poetic form of the classic Persian ghazal to deal with the untimely passing of his wife.

In the tradition of long-poem elegies―like Tennyson’s In Memoriam, Thomas Hardy’s verses to his wife and, more recently, Edward Hirsch’s Gabriel, A Passing Bell, about the untimely passing of the poet’s wife gives a shape to grief. In a pilgrimage we all undertake eventually, Kane’s poetry offers luminous sorrow and the glimmering possibility of joy restored.