Tag: Death
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Your Death Is Not a Blip
We all die. But, most people don’t like to think about that, which I think is a mistake. I find it helpful to consider my own death from time to time. It reminds me I’m alive. Poets help me to meditate on my own demise. A good poet will look death straight-on, and not flinch.…
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We’re all gonna die.
Death is something we don’t like to think about much, especially our own. I don’t believe it’s good to dwell on it too much, because there’s a lot of life to live. But that life really doesn’t mean much without death. Think of it as a deadline that you never know when it’s gonna come.…
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Why Live? Good Question
It’s the end of the semester at my university, and I see near-horror on every single one of my students’ faces. Haggard, stressed, they walk the halls with a vacuous look, with nine essays and five exams whipping their minds into near-submission. Every fiber of their existence is as taut as a bow string; and…
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“F**k You, Death.”
We’ve been reading about Death in Robert Frost’s and Emily Dickinson’s poems. They’ve both got different voices, and different “angles” on dying. Now we have our friend, Dylan Thomas, the scotch-slugging, chain-smoking Welsh poet who gives us a little advice on facing our own death. “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” is one…
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Emily’s Fly
We’re reading Emily Dickinson now, some of her greatest hits (she had tons). Emily was a poet from the 19th century, from Massachusetts, who wrote like, I don’t know, ten billion poems and stuffed them in drawers, cabinets, under her bed; I picture her entire house wallpapered in them. Only a handful were published in…