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Annotated by:
- Stanford, Ann Folwell
- Date of entry: Jan-16-1998
Summary
This short poem, one of a series entitled "A Catch of Shy Fish," describes an old sick man whose life is "closing in" and who feels only pain ("mind is a little isle") until there enters "an impudence of red," flowers that, for him become a "ripe rebuke," a "burgeoning affluence" that "mocks [him] and "mocks the desert of my bed."
Miscellaneous
The David Company’s address is: P.O. Box 19355, Chicago, IL 60619.
Primary Source
Blacks
Publisher
The David Company
Place Published
Chicago
Edition
1987
Commentary
With remarkable economy (the poem has 7 lines), the speaker gets at the isolation and loneliness that pain causes and the difficulty of a sick (and presumably dying) person who is confronted with life and color. This poem would be useful paired with Sylvia Plath’s Tulips, a poem about an adult who is recovering from surgery and is angry when the isolation of her pain is jarred by a vase of red tulips. The question of caring for sick and recovering people (and their sometimes puzzling resentment) can be profitably discussed using these poems.