Dying: An Introduction

Sissman, L. E. (Louis Edward)

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Annotated by:
Coulehan, Jack
  • Date of entry: Apr-21-1999
  • Last revised: Aug-17-2006

Summary

This five-part poem sketches five vignettes of the poet’s life. First, he sits in the doctor’s waiting room. Second, the doctor says " ’this lump is probably nothing, but . . . ’ " Third, the poet has a biopsy. Fourth, the pathology report, which is positive, " ’But be glad / These things are treatable today . . . Why, fifteen years ago --’ " Finally, the poet is outside on the street, observing "through my / Invisible new veil / Of finity . . . / November’s world."

Commentary

Sissman developed Hodgkin’s Disease in 1965, when he was 37 years old. He lived another ten years, during which he wrote most of his mature poetry and published three collections. This is the title poem of his first book, published in 1968.

The poem evokes the seemingly ordinary events surrounding a person’s initial confrontation with his own mortality. A person becomes a patient and "probably nothing" becomes his mortal enemy. See also other related poems by Sissman:  Dying: A Resurrection, 1969;  A Deathplace (annotated by Jack Coulehan and by  Lois Nixon); and Homage to Clotho: A Hospital Suite, annotated by James Terry and by  Lois Nixon) in this database.

Primary Source

Hello Darkness

Publisher

Little, Brown

Place Published

Boston

Edition

1978

Editor

Peter Davison