In Memorium

Hearle, Kevin

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Annotated by:
Aull, Felice
  • Date of entry: Nov-11-2002

Summary

This poem is in memory of poet, John Logan (1923-1987), who, it is surmised, killed himself by jumping off a building. The speaker of the poem imagines what might have been troubling Logan, who had been disabled by strokes.

Commentary

Hearle, a poet, understands what it must be like for a poet--who deals in words, in meaning--to lose "words and memory," "stunned by meanings / [his lips] could not convey." In addition, Hearle implies, Logan's background may have pre-disposed him to suicidal depression: "such loneliness--// his mother, dead / in childbirth . . . " In Hearle's conception, Logan embraced death: "he saw the earth approaching / and kissed it // uncontrollably." The final word, standing by itself, "uncontrollably," suggests inevitability, forces over which there was no control.

Miscellaneous

First published: 1994

Primary Source

Each Thing We Know Is Changed Because We Know It, and Other Poems

Publisher

Ahsahta Press of Boise State University

Place Published

Boise, Idaho

Edition

1996