I’ve received a complaint about Poetry Breaks Things. Too much talk of death, too many poems about dying. Too gloomy. Too morose. Cheer up a bit already, I was told. Be a little more positive. That would be hard to do, since (1) I am positive I am going to die, and (2) I am by and large a cheerful person. I laugh a lot. I tell jokes. I love April Fool’s Day.
So back to dead. Why so much?
Here’s why! After birth, death is the next big thing. Look at tombstones. Two facts are always noted; date of birth, date of death. Jesse James tombstone: 1847-1882. Albert Einstein’s tombstone: 1879 -1955. Whether villain or genius, both note the beginning and the end. What we do in the dash between dates tells the story of our meantime which is the story of your life.
Of course, much of significance happens in the meantime, the between time, but it is always in between, alpha and omega, A and Z, beginning and end. The more time between birth and death, the more things can happen. But without taking the fact of beginning and end into account, those meantime things might lack the intense richness of experience that awareness of our finitude offers. We are always living on the edge.
Think salt. Sea salt is big these days. You see it added to chocolates, ice cream, and cookies. Would you eat a teaspoon of sea salt? No! But sprinkling salt into or onto food brings out the flavor. Salt gives other flavors an edge to work against. Salt creates contrast which makes a whole palette of flavor sensations more out-standing, more richly experienced.
Life lived against the edge takes on flavor and intensity. It shocks us out of the debilitating tranquility which leads to lethargy, inattention, procrastination. Death is such an edge. It is a reveille wake up call to attention. Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote in her diary:
God, let me be conscious of it! Let me be conscious
of what is happening. Let me realize it and feel it vividly.
Let not the consciousness of this come to me tardily, so
that I half miss the experience. Let me be conscious of it!
Death, and poems about death can be a call to consciousness,, to be fully alive in the body of our life.