Tag Archives: Poetry

Poetic Grief, Revisited

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My Great-Aunt Ginger died yesterday. It is my family’s time to mourn now, and so once more I turn to another writer’s words to express thoughts which refuse to be corralled by my own mind.

“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.” -Lemony Snicket, ‘Horseradish:Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid’.

Poetic Grief

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My husband’s Aunt died today. After soothing his immediate grief, the first thing my mind turned to was poetry, death poetry: one of the three essential subjects of literature (and life), along with birth and love. Every poet that I can think of has touched on the theme, often numerous times. This is a piece by Rainer Maria Rilke, offered here as a lovely and sad filler whilst we deal with more pressing events.

‘On Hearing of a Death’ by Rainer Maria Rilke

We lack all knowledge of this parting. Death
does not deal with us. We have no reason
to show death admiration, love or hate;
his mask of feigned tragic lament gives us

a false impression. The world’s stage is still
filled with roles which we play. While we worry
that our performances may not please,
death also performs, although to no applause.

But as you left us, there broke upon this stage
a glimpse of reality, shown through the slight
opening through which you disappeared: green,
evergreen, bathed in sunlight, actual woods.

We keep on playing, still anxious, our difficult roles
declaiming, accompanied by matching gestures
as required. But your presence so suddenly
removed from our midst and from our play, at times

overcomes us like a sense of that other
reality: yours, that we are so overwhelmed
and play our actual lives instead of the performance,
forgetting altogether the applause.

Voices from the Grave-Some Words of Introduction

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Reading is thought of as a silent pursuit, a psychic communion between two intellects and imaginations: those of author and reader. Yet, the space between those points is filled with a cacophony of phantom voices; characters go about their business as they would in the real world: shouting, whispering, crying, laughing. Your voice, too, is heard, as you process your own ideas and opinions. The quiet, firm mastermind behind the subtleties of plot and style is there, guiding everything behind a mask of neutrality: gagged by choice but interacting with everyone, across an expanse of space and time that refuses to be confined.

If you have ever been to a book reading you know what a wonderful experience it is to hear a writer read from one of their works. Maybe their words have been echoing for years in your head, until the only voice associated with them is your own. Hearing them spoken by the person who strung them together in such a serendipitous way may be jarring or amazing, at first, but surely it is always exhilarating. When many of your favorite authors are of the long-dead variety, setting off to the neighborhood Barnes & Noble for a Thursday night listen-and-greet is out of the question.

If we cannot travel back to the 1920s to catch Edna St. Vincent Millay on one of her famous speaking tours, or to the 1960s to hear Sylvia Plath give a radio reading, we can do the next best thing. That realm-of-nearly-all-things-are-possible, the Internet, is accessible with a few clicks of the keyboard. We are going to gather our favorite clips of writers speaking and permanently park them right here, under the auspices of ‘Voices from the Grave’.

First up: Robert Graves.