Kenneth Fearing’s Dirge Essay

Poetry is a voice for addressing complex ideas that humanity has contemplated for thousands of years. Poets use a variety of literary techniques and stylistic features to convey these desired ideas. A prevalent theme deliberated in many poems across genres and throughout history is death. Death is unknown, therefore exploring it through poetry attempts to alleviate some of this uncertainty. This is done in a variety of literal and figurative contexts, including hope, freedom, literal death and beauty. Illuminating death in this way helps humanity to come to terms with something often feared.

Diction is employed thoroughly in order to direct the connotations of the reader towards his views on death and to evoke contradicting meanings. This creates almost an emotive tone within the calming sound of the poem if it were to be read aloud. In turn this again demonstrates calmness and peace next to a generally disagreeable situation (death). For instance this is demonstrated with the recurrence of the line, “I have a rendezvous with Death.” The word, “rendezvous” coming

Alternatively we can determine that these affect everyone’s lives similarly. As all stanzas without dependence on matter begin and end in this conclusive manner. The bystanders in the poem can be seen as a symbol for humanity as a whole and their response to death. Their ordinary and individual lives are affected by death in the same way through projecting grief towards the victim but moreover focusing on ‘their own distress’. The idea that death is experienced by everyone is proven in the statement ‘all streets in time are visited’. He therefore concludes that we are all impacted by death, it is ‘all we are’, the one thing we all share in common. His realistic view of death shows his acceptance of the subject. In an alternate view we could argue he sees death optimistically. His collective nouns ‘all we are’, ‘all we do’ show a universal

Emily Dickinson’s poem, “465 I Heard a Fly Buzz—when I died—”, uses its form to emphasize the distracting elements in a human’s life. In the case of this poem, the appearance of multiple caesuras throughout the poem asserts the distractions the speaker is experiencing. With the help of the caesuras, the readers get to experience death as real life and not like as it is seen in the movies and this shows that distractions are around us at all time. Along with caesuras, Dickinson structures her poem with four stanzas. Each stanza represents the speaker getting closer and closer to death. the third stanza, however, there is a shift. In addition to caesuras, the shift brings in to play the element of distraction, which is the main theme of the poem.

The main character in this poem is an address to a lovelorn man, spoken by a seductive voice from beyond the grave to encourage him to rejoin a dead lover by taking his own life. He is told that he may find her through suicide. Although the poem might appear to display a faith in life after death, the intense desolation of his experience points, rather, to an expression of longing for death and an inability to endure more life in such grief-stricken loneliness. The poem dramatizes the conflict between his life and his lover, does he really want to go to stay with her, or not. A voice inside the man's head is coming from beyond the grave to tempt him. This voice stands for his lost love encouraging him to join her on the other side. He feels betrayed and abandoned, being left alone to face the cruel outside world. Appropriately,“Luke Havergal” reads like a revealing and realistic short story in verse, providing readers with a snapshot portrait of a lonely main

Links between death and darkness, death and night, and death and a permanent ending are ones that have been made over and over throughout history. Similarly, the idea of death as a deliverance from the sufferings of human existence and as the journey to something better is recurrent in art and literature, but also in many religious beliefs. By playing with both tropes simultaneously, Thomas and Dowson offer a vulnerable and realistic portrayal of many people’s feelings about death. The duality, the uncertainty, seems conflicting but instead it widens the scope of the poems and offers a broader depiction of this inevitable human phenomenon. Neither poet gives a definitive answer as to what his belief about what lies beyond death is and yet, neither poems feel incomplete. They both pose a question rather than giving an answer, a tentative exploration instead of firm

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;

Without doubt, poetry is the most diverse, flexible and philosophically profound branch of creative writing; in fact, this is especially true about modern poetry. Alehouse, an independent literary journal, represents a remarkable example of the modern poetic liberation, providing a collection of short poems exploring different subjects and forms. As most poetry, the Alehouse poems have no plot, no immediate subject; nor do they allow one clear and simple interpretation. Although a poem’s ultimate, profound meaning is deeply impacted by its author’s personal journey, there is one theme that can be found in most – death. The perception of death is metaphorically represented in many modern poems.

1. The exposition of this poem is when he goes to the river and tries to kill himself. It’s clear that the man is full of spirit and is currently facing some sort of personal problem that makes him want to commit suicide. When he tries to jump, he doesn’t “sink like a stone” he keeps rising to the surface and the cold water clears his mind and will not allow him to die.

In the second stanza, the narrator’s attention falls upon the mourners around her. She sees the onlookers in terms of sight and sound. Their strained eyes and gathered breath imply that they have waited for the “last Onset” (), which is the final moment of death, for a long time. And they are prepared for the arrival of the “King”, who is the personification of death.

Ironically, in the first lines of the poem, we are presented with Deaths’ humanly

The author explores the idea of death, and how people are afraid of it up until they’ve lived long enough to not be afraid of it any longer. It wasn’t hard for me to discern the significance of this poem. I don’t mean to boast about myself but rather to highlight the fact that this poem is written very simply, even though the poem is of a heavy topic. Because of this, I feel that the poem seems to give off a natural feeling when reading. I believe that because the poem is so casual, it only emphasizes its underlying meaning that death is a natural occurrence.

The rhetorical devices the author uses set a witty, and graceful tone to a poem that should be voiced in grief. The Titanic can be regarded as a great historical tragedy, yet the reader is almost able to feel

People would not want to hear that their loved ones merely gave up and died passively. This poem in itself is a celebration of life, the poem is not only about death but it is an affirmation of life. To further emphasise the points being made Dylan Thomas utilises a wide range of literary devices. Parallelism is used from lines seven to fifteen to juxtapose the different attitudes of the so called “genres” of men at their death. This is used to outline that if you continuously lead one set type of lifestyle whether it is as a “wild man”, a “grave man” or a “good man” you will not be satisfied when your time comes to die. The only true way to be satisfied is to live a life of balance; only with a good contrast can you be at peace.

Poetry is an art form that has often been highly regarded. It brings together some of the most complex forms of writing in the English language. Two poems that focus on the same topic may sometimes, have completely different views and provide perspectives that may not have been considered by the other. Two of these Poems are Let Me Die A Youngman’s Death by Roger McGough and On Death by Anne Killigrew. The former poem by Roger McGough talks of how the speaker does not wish to die the peaceful death of an elderly person but rather the chaotic death of a young man. In death is nothing at all the speaker proposes that all should be as happy as before his death, and not view it in such a negative and secretive light.