In Memoriam Essay

The deceased are often remembered in either the best of themselves or the worst. Family and friends usually look back and reminisce on the most striking qualities held by their lost loved ones. Death is a shocking and confusing period for those affected by it and the whirlwind of emotions, such as the various stages of grief, catch many by surprise. Born in 1908, Theodore Roethke was an American poet who was deemed one of the most proficient and leading poets of his generation. In his poem, “Elegy for Jane”, Roethke uses a variety of poetic devices to express the different themes of love, happiness, and grief. His use of imagery, symbolism, persona, tone and word choice, contribute to the deeper meaning of the poem, assisting in the expression of the speaker’s feelings for Jane and of how, Jane, herself felt.

Death is a topic that unites all of humanity. While it can be uncomfortable to think about, confronting death in unavoidable. “Dying” addresses that discomfort and universal unwillingness to consider the inevitability of death. Pinsky’s use of imagery, symbolism, and tone create a poetic experience that is like death, something every reader can relate to. In “Dying,” Pinsky describes how people are oblivious and almost uncaring when it comes to the thought of death. Pinsky is trying to convince the reader that they shouldn’t ignore the concept of death because life is shorter than it seems.

Both John Doone and Emily Dickinson wrote amazing poems. “Valediction Forbidding Mourning” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” come together to give the reader two different ideas of death in itself. There are also extended metaphors in each poem. The amazing part of both of these poems, is that you can get so much out of it from reading it over and over again. There are so many meanings to so many words inside these poems.

I have attended Stoughton High all four years and have always had an interest in music. Although it won’t be my major in college, I wanted to do computer music on the side and maybe expand on that in my future. Music has always been a passion of mine and something I won’t give up on.

For her memory to fade from our lives like a dream; Our lips need not speak when our hearts mourn sincerely, For grief often dwells; Where it is seldom seen.

Both Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Dirge Without Music” and Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” are poems that discuss the emotional repercussions of death and dying. Grieving the loss of a loved one can be an extremely excruciating experience. At times one may feel suffocated by the sorrow and are desperate for a way to find relief from these intense emotions that are apparent in the grieving process. This is where works of literature can be therapeutic when dealing with difficult emotions. Poetry can be extremely helpful in this sense as one of its purposes is to emphasize certain feelings, ones that we feel but are not sure how to process. It can bring to life what we wish we could do or say, but are not able to. By cross-referencing

The raw emotion present in the poem can be felt immediately as the speaker describes the nature of the woman’s death. The speaker is clearly close to the dying woman, and is impacted by her deteriorating health as he/she describes how this situation alters his/her outlook of the world in lines two through four. Not only do these lines illustrate how the speaker is affected by the death of the woman, but the lines 19 and 20 also show this as the speaker says how his/her soul is “too jostled… to speak at length.” These lines exemplify the speaker’s disbelief at the death of the elderly woman and show, through his/her silence, how affected he/she really is. Death renders most in a state of sorrow and guilt for the continuation of life after death;

William Stafford does not deliberately come out and talk about nature death or violence. It slightly hides behind the significance of William using a different form of life. William tends to deceive you as the reader to make you perceive nature death and violence in a different way.

There are some things that we do know about this poem. It is most often referred to as an elegy because of the mood of mourning and regret. Upon further reading I discovered that this poem is like others of its time period. Many

Whether it is over the passing of a loved one, the end of a relationship, not getting the job they want, or maybe even failing a test, everyone will experience what it is like to grieve at some point in their lifetime. The way people grieve can be expressed in many different ways, though. Some people like to be completely alone, some like the company of others, and then there are those that act as if they are the only ones to ever go through any type of grief. The poets from the Romantic period, the Victorian age, and the twentieth century and after, all show some of the different ways in which people grieve.

Elegy’s are typically about the loss or change of something, where this poem is more about the memories he has of Tom Thomson and his

An elegy is a poem that laments the death, and love poetry can be about a romantic relationship whether it is ongoing or has ended. In relation to heartbreak, emotions or strategies used to convey these emotions can

Faiz Ahmed Faiz writes: “At night my lost memory of you returned / I was like the dying patient who, for no reason, smiles.” Of course, the night has been the time when people become vulnerable of their thoughts and their painful past experiences. In the mid-1900s, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, delves into these painful nights, where he reminisces about his beloved and longs for it, usually shown in his poetry. Consequently, Faiz Ahmed Faiz uses three literary devices in many ways to portray the true subject of poetry, based on him, which is the loss of the beloved. Specifically, Faiz uses emotional language, hyperbole, and allegory to illustrate the theme of the loss of the beloved.

the theme of death. The speaker of the poems talks about the loss of a

When reading the poem “Home Burial,” you automatically assume that the story has to deal with the death of something or somebody. The couple in this poem has lost their child. The mother I in deep despair as she has the right too because, she carried the baby for nine months. It is obvious that she has never recovered from this loss, while the husband presents himself as if the whole thing never happened. Most people in this position gradually work out a way of dealing with their grief, and go on with their lives. I feel as if despite the husband 's attempt to try to forget the incident, he could 've shown a little more compassion for his wife. I believe that the wife 's foggy mood, makes her outlook on her life and marriage so bad that she ends up making both her husband and herself victims of her issues. Just because, the husband didn 't show the same amount of emotion that she did. That doesn 't give her the right to just throw off all her emotional distress on him.