Intimate Things, Remembrance, Elegiac Remnants

The embodied afterlife of the slow intimacy between wearer and worn is what makes the left-behind clothing of the beloved dead the memory-scented remnants of their life that we hold on to, wear, and wrap around ourselves for solace in an attempt to bring them back to us. It is not surprising, then, that the poetry of mourning or elegy, which is the focus of this article, is often shaped around such a mnemonic and metonymic intimate thing. But, as the poems discussed here intimate, the clothing of the dead also stirs less straightforward emotions and the conundrum of what to do with these remains sometimes surfaces love’s hidden ambivalence. Tracing the afterlives of these remnants in examples from life and literature, this article offers a feminist reflection on the variable textures and textualities of slow intimacy as wearing, mourning, and reading practice.