Death in Poetry - Essay Example

Death in Poetry Death is often treated as a taboo in many social circles. People dislike talking about it and tend to express fear or avoidance of it when it is brought up. By contrast, it often shows up in various works of literature, but typically treated very seriously. Very few subjects are as serious as death even in this arena, so it is usually shown as triumph over evil, a tragic ending, or a very sad occurrence. What makes the poetry of Sandy McIntosh stand out in this respect is his seemingly light-hearted treatment of it even while he is also recognizing its permanence. In a clear attempt to deal with his mother’s death, the poet created numerous poems that explore, on multiple levels, the experience of irrevocably losing a loved one. His use of language is both simple and complex. The words he uses are approachable, easy to understand, and string together in an easy-to-follow sequence. However, the way he strings them together and the words he chooses to place in various places invoke a sense that there is much more being said than what comes through on a simple reading. In poems such as “Cemetery Chess” and “Between Earth and Sky”, McIntosh provides us with a seemingly whimsical look at death and its effects as he discusses his mother’s decline into death and eventual burial while also hinting that there’s something much deeper, more insightful, behind the words. Within both of these poems, McIntosh makes the topic of death something approachable and something that can be talked about without fear or overwhelming sadness. As fellow poet Neil de la Flor says, “McIntosh unlocks what's inside of us scurrying about in a disorganized, yet manufactured chaos of our own doing. McIntosh puts that mess in order and narrates the stories, the poems, that run through our veins and his. He paints a world that we can walk into and sit down safely next to our greatest fears and hopes” (2013). He does this through a very careful intellectual blend of awareness and emotion, adding available insight from various psychoanalytic theorists into the topics McIntosh chooses to discuss. Within each of these poems, one can see the interactions of Lacan’s three orders of the unconscious mind – the imaginary (also referred to as fantasy), the symbolic, and the real (Fink, 2013). In the poem "Between Earth and Sky", the speaker exposes some of the loss he feels as he begins to lose his mother. He writes at a time when he has already come to accept his mother's condition and is able to speak from a point of reflection and contemplation. He tells us this openly and realistically, admitting that it has been a process: There was a time when I would have corrected her right then: "No, Mother," I would have said. "That isn't true." But I've known for some time she's been going round the bend, her memory dissolving in dementia. It is only a surprise to find she has been busy rewriting our scripts with happy endings! (McIntosh, 15-20) Part of his acceptance may be the amount of time that has passed since his mother was first diagnosed, or it might be that he, and his mother have reached an age where death is no longer all that frightening. According to Feifel and Banscomb, "at both 'conscious' and 'fantasy' levels, older subjects displayed less fear of death than their middle-aged and younger counterparts (cited in Neimeyer, 2004) in scientific studies regarding attitudes toward death. However, that doesn't mean that the speaker is fully aware of what is going on. While looking at this poem, it is tempting to say Fink is wrong in his assessment of McIntosh's poetry as a whole that "the male speakers (and sometimes female characters) in his poems and prose-poems often seem to be caught in the grips of a psychological determinism that, to greater or lesser degrees, thwarts their agency, or else their lack of insight about how they are manipulated by external forces prevents them from perceiving possibilities for agency that can increase their range of freedom" (2013). However, looking a bit closer, the speaker's acceptance of his mother's mental decline is preventing him from seeing the real (imagined) connection they actually have, revealed by the end of the poem. Instead of recognizing that the two of them once shared a similar dream for his future, the speaker feels "the tugging of the cord that connects this mother / and son (though the mother is 84 and the son is 50" (McIntosh, 25-26). He feels they are being torn apart, indeed have already been torn apart, by her illness. He now weighs heavy on the ground and she has become tethered to the earth by the thinnest of kite strings, again invoking imagination to help soothe the hurt at the same time that symbolism functions to present a clear image of the situation. Yet McIntosh continues to demonstrate great insightfulness in his works, perhaps because of his works. "Talking to the dead can be understood as ... a restless un-working that refuses totalization and proceeds not by way of critique, but rather by juxtaposition, divergence, and difference. This is a dialectic without negation, yet capable of responding to disaster, broaching the unknown of one’s own thought through repetition, return, and response. (Jacobus, 2007). By examining what he is thinking in these moments of contemplation and paying attention to what is happening in his mind, the speaker is able to find the connection to his mother he thought he had already lost. "my mother, correct after all. How could I have doubted her? / So, for now, the mother and son remain united. / Between earth and sky, we meet in dream" (McIntosh, 38-40). With the final words of the poem, McIntosh lays in yet another layer of meaning, ensuring the reader picks up on the shared dream for the future that mother and son once had when he was a star student. “Cemetery Chess” is a very short poem looking at the relative positions of each of the characters mentioned, but no less meaningful. The first stanza reveals the juxtaposition of the speaker’s brother and the nanny who once cared for him in childhood: “Not twenty feet away, / another monument, / the grave of my brother’s nanny” (McIntosh, 4-6). This turns out to be of central importance to the meaning of the poem as this positioning is pointed out by the speaker’s mother as the brother’s coffin is being lowered into its final resting place. “”She wanted him for her own,” mother whispers. / “Now she’s got him” (McIntosh, 7-8). This sudden moment of the ridiculous intercedes at one of the saddest moments of the funeral process – as the last glimpses of the last element associated with the service is tucked under ground. "At any time the zany can burst out of the customary, the past out of the present. . . . For McIntosh, surprise is discovery of selfhood. His poems step back from actuality and reconsider what's familiar (Frank Allen cited by Fink, 2013). This statement by the mother allows both the speaker and the reader to step back and reassess internal conceptions of death and dying. In making this kind of statement, the mother is relying her belief that there is indeed some form of existence after death, if only that this person now ‘owns’ this part of the cemetery and anyone buried nearby has greater claim over their neighbors than any of the living coming to visit. “This act of escape is empathetic transformation of what lies beyond 'the real binding.' He . . . emphasizes the importance of 'something real' among 'hallucinations.'” (Frank Allen cited by Fink, 2013). Within this very simple-seeming stanza, the reader is taken from the real of the cemetery to the imaginary of ongoing life after death to the symbolic of the placement of the tombstones. The second stanza of this poem continues this sequence although a bit out of order. The speaker again places his reader within the realm of the real with the first line of the stanza, pointing out a decade has passed. This simple statement forces us out of the comedy of the moment between mother and son at the graveside of the speaker’s brother by causing us to consider, if even for a fraction of a moment, that a decade is 10 years. This simple calculation is a real, imaginary, and symbolic break from what the reader has experienced in the first stanza. The imaginary comes in with the second line in this stanza, “The game of Cemetery Chess progresses slowly” (McIntosh, 10). Of course, the real must enter in again to inform the reader that now mother has died and it is her coffin being lowered into the ground. There is no way of knowing whether the speaker is standing next to this gravesite alone or in company, but it is a given that he does not have either of his two close family members – his brother or his mother – standing with him to help comfort in this time of grief. However, the symbolic is brought in again to help lighten the mood: “Mother dies; her monument / erected midway between brother and nanny” (McIntosh, 11-12). Fink (2013) cites Zizek regarding the symbolic importance of the funeral rite which is particularly applicable to these lines. According to Zizek, the funeral rite, particularly the erection of what McIntosh refers to as the monument, assures the living that the deceased loved one will continue to live in memory. To reinforce this idea, McIntosh finishes this poem with a shared thought between the speaker, his brother, his mother, and the nanny. He simply whispers to the nanny, “Check” (McIntosh, 15). In this one-word statement, the speaker has encapsulated the symbolism of the monument placements and the family relationships as well as the hope and reality that there is a continued connection among these people and the imaginary connection to the greater political and strategic games of living. Thus, through both of these poems, it is possible to see that McIntosh is a master at layering meaning within his work, smoothly transitioning through the various orders of the unconscious mind. His poetry touches on the deep subjects in very meaningful ways, but they are not heavy and didactic or depressed and depressing. Instead, he provides very helpful commentary on how to deal with the loss of a loved one while still entertaining us as readers and instructing us through easily accessible symbolism and metaphor. Works Cited de la Flor, Neil. “Cemetery Chess: Selected and New Poems by Sandy McIntosh.” Galatea Resurrects: A Poetry Engagement. 20 (2013) Web. 4 Dec. 2013. Fink, Thomas.“Psychological Determinism and Navigable Interstices in Sandy McIntosh’s Poetry.”Talisman 41 (2013) Web.12 Nov. 2013. Jacobus, Mary. "'Distressful Gift': Talking to the Dead." South Atlantic Quarterly. 106, 2 (2007). Print. McIntosh, Sandy. Cemetery Chess, Selected and New Poems. New York: Marsh Hawk Press, 2012. Print. Neimeyer, Robert. “Psychological Research on Death Attitudes: An Overview and Evaluation.” Death Studies, 28 (2004). Print. Read More