Phenomenal. To your comment, what I love about the vulnerability and questioning here is that it brings the focus of the poem out and shifts the subject. Rather than being a poem meditating on the beauty of death and our yearning for it, it is instead a poem about a poet considering these thoughts and questioning their value, broadening the topic from death to poetry, art, audience, and so on. Neither the thought nor the thinker is the subject, but their relationship, a relationship we as readers are now a part of. It's a snapshot into a moment of introspection, still focusing on something broad and universal but framed intimately and personally.
Thanks for this, Conor! That's a really helpful reading - it seems at first glance like a poem about death, but it's actually about the artist's relationship to death. What you're pointing to is what I think a big part of what I love about this and may more poems by Halpern (and others) - that he doesn't just present something to us, but invites us to participate in his consciousness as he considers what is presented to him. Your point about this enabling the poem to be both broad and universal and also intimate and personal is I think spot on.
Phenomenal. To your comment, what I love about the vulnerability and questioning here is that it brings the focus of the poem out and shifts the subject. Rather than being a poem meditating on the beauty of death and our yearning for it, it is instead a poem about a poet considering these thoughts and questioning their value, broadening the topic from death to poetry, art, audience, and so on. Neither the thought nor the thinker is the subject, but their relationship, a relationship we as readers are now a part of. It's a snapshot into a moment of introspection, still focusing on something broad and universal but framed intimately and personally.
Thanks for this, Conor! That's a really helpful reading - it seems at first glance like a poem about death, but it's actually about the artist's relationship to death. What you're pointing to is what I think a big part of what I love about this and may more poems by Halpern (and others) - that he doesn't just present something to us, but invites us to participate in his consciousness as he considers what is presented to him. Your point about this enabling the poem to be both broad and universal and also intimate and personal is I think spot on.