Yesterday at my father’s memorial service I read ones of his poems about the recurrent cycle of life.
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Tag Archives: death and dying
The Song of Night’s Sweet Bird
Shelley’s elegy to Keats, “Adonais,” gives us a rich vision of our relationship with death.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Ode to a Nightingale", Adonais, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley | Comments closed
Green Knight’s Lessons on Death & Dying
My next book will be on what “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” teaches us about death and dying.
Carrying on a Poetic Quest after a Death
Now that my father has died, my mother will be taking on sole responsibility for the local newspaper’s poetry column.
Poetry vs. Death’s Madness
In the face of death, poetry stands as a bulwark against dissolution, chaos, and madness.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "How could I have come so far?", "Life Monitor", Cat's Cradle, Charles Dickens, Checkmate, Ciaran O'Driscoll, David Copperfield, Dorothy Dunnett, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom McGrath | Comments closed
A Time for Silence
Silence can be a very powerful response to tragedy.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "I Am the Rest between Two Notes", Bible, Ecclesiastes, Rainer Maria Rilke | Comments closed
Waiting for the Tide to Turn
Dickinson, Coleridge and Dickens come to mind as we await the moment of my father’s death.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "After great pain a formal feeling comes", Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Emily Dickinson, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge | Comments closed
Moving through Death’s Doorway
My father’s poem about Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” is comforting me as he slides towards death.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Dream of the Little Match Girl in New York", Hans Christian Andersen, Little Match Girl, Scott Bates | Comments closed
Magnificent Women in the Sick Room
Tolstoy shows us deathbed vigils can spur us to a deeper engagement with life.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Do Not Go Gentle", "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning", Anna Karenina, Dylan Thomas, George Eliot, John Donne, Leo Tolstoy, Middlemarch | Comments closed