When my best friend Rachel Kranz died yesterday. I turned to Shelley’s “Adonais” for comfort.
Tag Archives: death and dying
Once There Was Light
I turned to Jane Kenyon’s “Having It Out with Melancholy” when a friend’s illness suddenly took a turn for the worse.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Having It Out with Melancholy", cancer, Illness, Jane Kenyon | Comments closed
Lit Comforts an ALS Sufferer
This past March an ALS sufferer spoke eloquently, shortly before her death, about how she turned to Sophocles, Kafka, and Shakespeare for comfort.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged ALS, Franz Kafka, Hamlet, Lynette Williamson, Metamorphosis, Oedipus, Sophocles, William Shakespeare | Comments closed
Lear, Trump & the Tyrant’s Loneliness
Donald Trump is like Lear in that both are trapped in a loneliness of their own making and, in their despair, both make the lives around them miserable. Lear finds his soul again at the end of the play, however. It might take a similar adversity for Trump to do so as well.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Donald Trump, fear of death, King Lear, loneliness, William Shakespeare | Comments closed
Memorial Day: Anthem for Doomed Youth
With Memorial Day, there is the danger that we will romanticize the deaths of the fallen rather than face up to the full tragedy. This tension can be seen in a number of World War I poems, some of which romanticize the fallen while others dwell on the absurdity of their deaths.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "For the Fallen", "I Have a Rendezvous with Death", "Soldier", Alan Seeger, Laurence Binyon, Memorial Day, Rupert Brooke, war, Wilfred Owen, World War I | Comments closed
The Fires and the Black River of Loss
We recently held a memorial service for my dear friend and colleague Kate Chandler. I read from some of Kate’s eloquent nature writings and concluded with a Mary Oliver poem.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "In Blackwater Woods", Kate Chandler, Mary Oliver | Comments closed
A Dear Friend Is Made One with Nature
My dear, dear friend Kate Chandler died yesterday. I am turning to Percy Shelley’s, a poem she loved, as I mourn her.
Lit As a Framework for Exploring Death
Paul Kalinithi turned to existential writers as he attempted to understand the fact that he was dying. He arrived at a more spiritual understanding than he anticipated.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Baron Brook Fulke Greville, Krapp's Last Tape, Paul Kalinithi, Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, Waiting for Godot, Waste Land | Comments closed
Poe: Trapped in the Prison of the Self
Two Chinese students have brought home to me, from their collectivist perspective, how Edgar Allan Poe went against the grain of American individualism. He exposed its dark side, even as Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman were unabashedly celebrated it.
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allan Poe, Fall of the House of Usher, marcissism, Masque of the Red Death, Sigmund Freud, uncanny | Comments closed
