Death As A Theme In Modern Poetry Essays - Guggenheim Fellows

Death As A Theme In Modern Poetry Death has been and always will be an interesting and compelling topic among poets and authors alike. Death sheds a mysterious vale over life and is often avoided or dreaded within people causing diversity among the reactions of modern poetry and thought. Mortality can be treated as a crisis, a destination, with significance or without, as well as (sadly) by some as a goal. Death provides a wide spectrum of ideas that can be expanded upon with dignity or as a magnanimous ideal. The poets that I have read and pondered deliver an array of insight on the topic; from its grotesqueness to its humbleness. They approach or meditate upon death with disgust as well as with nonchalance. Overall I think that although the poets each dissect and interpret our inevitable encounter in variation they all would agree in its mystery and finality. To live, especially with comfort and respect, can often be, and is usually, a difficult as well as unavoidable task. Dying can be viewed in much the same way. Although you sometimes have a choice, often death is sudden and miserable and can end a life with little or no grace. I think Randall Jarrell would agree with me on this point. In his poem The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner Jarrell explicates upon a situation that although is sometimes forced at a person, is often (especially within his time-period) viewed with high regard in the population. What would be a better way to die than defending one's nation and doing your part in freeing millions of oppressed people? But this brave act by a man who is terrified ends in what I would see as humiliation. His parents or friends would not view his death as disgraceful or anything but the way in which his remains were desecrated would have surely been disgusting. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. The idea of somebod y washing the flesh and guts of a recently deceased person portrays how pathetic the finality of one's live can be. This frightened man who fell into the State straight from his mother's sleep was possibly given a hero's burial but at the same time his carcass remains were hosed out of the turret. This is an almost obscene gesture. Isaac Rosenburg analyzes a death in war in much the same way. In his poem Dead Man's Dump he remarks, A man's brains splattered on A stretcher-bearers face; this hideous observation points out to us how un-heroic death on a battlefield actually is. Death as thought about by Jarrell and Rosenberg is not beautiful but messy and possibly even an event of degradation. Is death a fate that is left up to us? Or do we die as the direct result of action, or possibly inaction of others? This is a question that will probably always be argued and probably never be answered; the conclusion will at least not be ascertained by us mere mortals. In the poem Not Waving But Drowning this issue is touched upon either directly on indirectly by Stevie Smith and is possibly more of a backdrop than a theme. The man who dies in the poem (which is I would also call a story) does have control over his fate in this situation. Perhaps if he were a better swimmer or would not have eaten so much before he went out he would not have been in this predicament, but that is beside the point. I was much further out than you thought, she says (and to make my point I am taking all of this in the literal and not figurative form) with a sort of shame. This suggests that the speaker of this narrative had some control over this man's death but was either to careless or not observant e nough to save his life. This man's fate therefor was not completely in his own hands, although it was not necessarily in total control of the narrator either. This to me basically implies that although fate does rest in our hands to some extent, it also lies (at least aspects of it) in the hands of