A very short poem, describing the increasingly circumscribed life of a dying woman in a nursing home, a woman who "is like a horse grazing / a hill pasture that someone makes / smaller by coming every night / to pull the fences in and in." The final lines are a moving plea for God to bring the woman to a gentle death.

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Eating the Cookies

Kenyon, Jane

Last Updated: Oct-21-1996

Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Death and Dying
Grief
Mourning

Summary:

The speaker describes cleaning out the house of a friend/relative who has recently died. She rewards each small accomplishment in her sorting through of the dead woman's possessions by eating one cookie from a tin of homemade cookies that was sent by the woman's cousin before she died. As she reaches the end of her cleaning, the speaker takes the last cookie from the tin: "I took it up / and sniffed it, and before eating it, / pressed it against my forehead, because / it seemed like the next thing to do."

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What Came to Me

Kenyon, Jane

Last Updated: Oct-21-1996

Dittrich, Lisa

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Grief
Mourning

Summary:

A very short poem, in which the speaker, sorting through old china, finds a dead friend/relative's gravy boat "with a hard, brown / drop of gravy still / on the porcelain lip." This discovery leads the speaker to truly grieve the loss of this person in a way she hadn't before.

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The Last Decision

Angelou, Maya

Last Updated: Oct-17-1996

Nixon, Lois LaCivita

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Aging
Death and Dying
Disability
Human Worth
Illness and the Family
Suffering
Vision Disorder

Summary:

Angelou’s four stanza poem is narrated by an elderly person, probably a woman. In each of the stanzas, the proud and forthright speaker dismisses the desire to stay alive. She sizes up her circumstances pragmatically--the inconveniences and disabilities. She can no longer bother with the print that has become "too small," the food that is "too rich," the tiring concerns of her children, and, finally, the weariness of life. Each is addressed in its own stanza, but the concluding refrain is the same; she will give up reading, then eating, then listening--and then life. "Today," she says rather convincingly in her final line, "I’ll give up living."

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Anti-Clockwise (2)

Abse, Dannie

Last Updated: Oct-17-1996

Aull, Felice

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Aging
Body Self-Image
Ordinary Life
Sexuality

Summary:

The narrator is watching his "grey-haired neighbor" starting on an early-morning run "anti-clockwise around the block," trying to turn the clock backwards in pursuit of youth and health. The narrator sees this as the age-old quest for virility, satirically recalling historic figures who sought to preserve or enhance their sexual prowess. But he recognizes that these are supremely human impulses--"Don't mock, only the young don't wish to be younger." He muses that perhaps the current fads of jogging and health food are better than some of the more gruesome practices in which mankind has been known to engage.

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The Birth

Muldoon, Paul

Last Updated: Oct-17-1996

Ratzan, Richard M.

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Childbirth
Father-Daughter Relationship
Parenthood
Pregnancy

Summary:

The Birth, appropriately, is the last of the three birth-cycle poems in The Annals of Chile, Muldoon's latest collection. The three together (all annotated in this database--see Sonogram and Footling) celebrate three aspects of the gestation and delivery of the poet's new daughter.

Beginning with the poet's donning a scrub suit ("lime-green scrubs"), the poem quickly explodes into a festive pyrotechnics that reminds one of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Joyce: ". . . the windlass-women ply their shears / and gralloch-grub / for a footling foot, then, warming to their task, / haul into the inestimable / realm of apple-blossoms and chanterelles and damsons / and eel-spears. . . . "

It takes courage and skill to carry off such a verbal tour de force but Muldoon aptly does so, charging the poem with the newness, sheer power of wonder, and joy of loving a thing for itself that his daughter's birth means to him. This is a joyous poem that can almost visibly demonstrate to students how poetry gets its job done. It may even make more than a few try their hand.

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Footling

Muldoon, Paul

Last Updated: Oct-17-1996

Ratzan, Richard M.

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Childbirth
Father-Daughter Relationship
Parenthood
Pregnancy

Summary:

Paul Muldoon is one of Ireland's most prominent poets. He is a poet's poet, celebrating language, Irish culture and Ireland in almost every word. In "Footling", "Sonogram" (the preceding poem), and "The Birth" --all from his latest collection, The Annals of Chile--Muldoon is apparently chronicling the recent growth of his family in a poetic triptych of power and inventiveness. "Footling" describes the seeming reluctance of the poet's daughter to venture forth and breach the "great sea-wall" in order to "take a header" into the great "ground swell (italicized) of life." See this database for annotations of Sonogram and The Birth.

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Hospital View

Lux, Thomas

Last Updated: Oct-17-1996

Coulehan, Jack

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Catastrophe
Hospitalization
Patient Experience

Summary:

The narrator lies in a hospital room, across the hall from the entrance to the Intensive Care Unit. He imagines what goes on beyond that door--"beep-machines, a blur / of women and men in white frocks." He wishes that he had a better, less frightening view of the world. Staring at the door, however, he sends his wish to the Intensive Care patients "that your lives be again and again / limned by dawn."

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