Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Richard Cory” offers a fascinating portrayal of its subject—a rich, well-respected man commits suicide. This poems demonstrates that literal language virtually completely free from literary devices can function poetically.
Introduction with Text of “Richard Cory”
Readers are indeed shocked into questioning “why?” as in the final stanza they are accosted with the line delivering the message that Richard Cory one night, “Went home and put a bullet through his head.”
The question provoked by this act does not appear to have a definite answer, but it does convincingly imply that despite outward appearances and wealth, one may feel so empty inside that one prefers death to life.
The speaker represents all those neighbors who thought Richard Cory’s life was far superior to their own. However, it becomes clear that they had been led astray by outward appearance.
Had they been able to become acquainted with the inner life of the man they so admired, they might have discovered the specifics of Richard Cory’s existence. But for purposes of the poem, only the mystery is necessary; indeed, it is preferable because life is full of such mysteries.
Richard Cory
Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, “Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king— And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Reading
Commentary on “Richard Cory”
Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Richard Cory” renders its message in quite a literal poem, virtually devoid of any figurative language—appropriate for both the speaker and the subject of the poem.
First Stanza: The Richness of Literal Language
Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim.
Although the poem employs no poetic device such as metaphor, symbol, or simile, its use of language is rich and full. The opening line exemplifies the richness: if Richard Cory “went down town,” then he had been uptown.
Stereotypically, being uptown indicates a neighborhood where the well-to-do lived. This dichotomy continues throughout the poem: a dichotomy of contrast between the wealthy and the less well off. The poem’s speaker is one of the less well off, those who thought of Richard Cory as being “richer than as king.”
Those “on the pavement” indicate the working class, apartment dwellers who struggled to survive, while Richard Cory moved in the circle of ladies and gentlemen—not just men and women who work hard for their meagre pittance.
Richard Cory was “a gentleman from sole to crown”—from his feet to his head. “Crown” is a pun, meaning top of the head as well as the head ornament of a king. “Crown” is, in fact, the only term in the poem that offers a slightly figurative use.
The poem functions quite well without any obvious figurative language. The fact that this poem remains quite literal demonstrates that literal language completely free from literary devices can function poetically.
Second Stanza: A Nice Man
And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, “Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
Despite Richard Cory’s being so rich and kingly, the man was still a very nice human being. He did not snub people; he engaged pleasantly with them. The speaker, who is obviously obsessed with Richard Cory’s status, and no doubt a bit envious, would have expected Cory’s behavior to have been arrogant. But the opposite was true.
Still Cory’s appearance dazzled those who encountered him. He made the common folk a little uneasy when he spoke to them, even though he was affable and friendly and seemed to be happy. Those common folk seemed unable to identify with Cory simply because of the differences between the classes.
Richard Cory actually seems to have similar attributes to the folks who admired him. He likely shared their mores, education level, and interests, but he differed only because of his wealth. His admirers perceive Cory to be from a different “class.”
They would consider him high class as opposed to their middle or low classes. Even in a supposed “classless” American society, citizens have always made distinctions based on class which is normally based on wealth, rather than heredity.
What makes classes different in America is that citizens have the ability to move between classes. Those born rich may not remain so; and those born poor have the opportunity to rise.
Third Stanza: The Vacuousness of Envy
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king— And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place.
The speaker, likely because of his nervous admiration of Cory, exaggerates Cory’s wealth by claiming he was “richer than a king.” In addition to being financially successful, Cory was well educated.
He possessed knowledge, and he also possessed the grace with which to behave properly. The speaker and his milieu concluded that Richard Cory possessed everything a human being needed to be successful. They envied him; thus, they wanted to be Richard Cory.
As the poem progresses, however, it will be realized that such claims regarding Richard Cory must be taken only provisionally. It will become obvious that those “people on the pavement” have completely misread the qualities of Richard Cory, especially after learning of the wealthy, accomplished gentleman’s final act.
Fourth Stanza: Looks Can Be Deceiving
So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.
In the two opening lines of the last stanza of the poem, once again differences between the two socio-economic classes are dramatized. The working, struggling folk “on the pavement” worked and struggled so that one day they too could be like Richard Cory.
They worked, struggled, and complained. Then the irony of their complaining unfolds when this paragon of virtue that they had idolized and idealized “went home and put a bullet through his head.”
This act told them that looks can, indeed, be deceiving.
Dramatizing a Truth
The poem, “Richard Cory,” dramatizes a truth about life with all its appearances, contradictory evidence, and unexpected occurrences, confirming that life and human behavior, indeed, remain a mystery.
The poet has accomplished this achievement in a fine poem without one metaphor, simile, or other poetic device. The literal language is rich and deep and without nuance. It does its job like the people on the pavement, and it does it without gloss and glitter.
This lack of figurative or “poetic” language is not an anomaly; many fine poems do not rely on any figurative language such a metaphor, image, personification, simile, or other literary device.
The only requirement for a poem to function well is that the language be authentic and possess levels of truth. Readers must be able to identify with the claims beings made, even if such claims do not reflect the readers’ views or knowledge.
Simon and Garfunkel’s Song Based on “Richard Cory”
Simon and Garfunkel adapted the basic premise of this poem and fashioned it into a song that purports to fill in some information. The song actually transforms the story into a more macabre situation than is offered in the poem. For example, the chorus remarks,
But I work in his factory And I curse the life I’m living And I curse my poverty And I wish that I could be Richard Cory.
The chorus is repeated after every verse, which is the tradition for songs. However, because that particular chorus is repeated verbatim even after Cory put the bullet in his head, it is jarring and, at first, seems nonsensical. Why would the narrator continue to wish to be Richard Cory even after Cory killed himself?
One might assume that the “people on the pavement” would have changed their minds about admiring and idolizing Richard Cory after he put a bullet through his head. The song seems to take another tack: because the narrator in the song finds his life so degrading, he wishes he could be like Richard Cory and also end his life.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Come Not, When I Am Dead” features qualities of the versanelle form, using stark images as it concludes its message in just twelve short lines.
Introduction and Text of “Come Not, When I Am Dead”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s versanelle, “Come Not,When I am Dead,” features two rimed sestets each with the rime scheme, ABABCC. Each sestet features a concluding couplet with the same rime. The poem dramatizes the theme of a spurned lover who speaks harsh words to the one who has jilted him.
Come not, When I am Dead
Come not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by.
Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest: Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie: Go by, go by.
Commentary on “Come Not, When I Am Dead”
The speaker is dramatizing an unusual, acerbic message for a former lover.
First Sestet: No Visiting
Come not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by.
The speaker addresses his former lover with the intention of showing her that she is silly, so silly that after his death, the speaker does not welcome her to come to his grave and mourn his passing. He does not want her to “drop [her] foolish tears upon [his grave].”
Furthermore, the speaker does not want her “to trample round [his] fallen head.” He paints her as a graceless person grinding the dirt around his grave into “unhappy dust.” True lovers who truly mourn the loss of a lover would want to scoop up some of that dirt and save it, but not his lover; she would merely cause his grave to look untidy.
The speaker demands that she not visit his resting place but instead merely “let the wind sweep” in place of her skirts swishing around his grave. He welcomes a crying bird and imagines its plaint more appropriate than the “foolish tears” of his faithless former love. Thus, the speaker demands that she “go by.” She should just keep walking past his grave and not stop and pretend to care.
Second Sestet: Keep Walking
Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest: Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie: Go by, go by.
Continuing his disdain for his fickle lover, the speaker addresses her by calling her “Child.” He speculates that if she was, in fact, the cause of his death, he “care[s] no longer.” Indicating that at one time he cared very much, he makes it clear that now he does not.
She abandoned him and caused him to be “unblest” by her love, and even if her departure has killed him, he does not welcome her pretense or acknowledgment that she once cared for him.
The speaker tells her to “[w]ed whom thou wilt.” By this remark, he is, again, trying to demonstrate his current apathy. But he adds that he is “sick of Time, / And [he] desire[s] to rest.” His protest reveals that the love he lost has taken a mighty toll on him; it has made him not care for anything in life any longer.
The speaker then commands her once again to keep away, to keep walking, not to stop at his grave, but simply “Go by, go by.” He repeats for a third time that he wants her pass by his grave and not stop to mourn him.
A Common Theme
The speaker, of course, has not died but uses the imagined occasion of his death to emphasize how destructive to his heart has been the break with the lover addressed in the poem. This ploy remains a common theme for many lost love poems, but an unusual choice for Tennyson, who is famous for his profundity.
Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” is an American (Innovative) sonnet, and it is one of the best poems written in the English language, particularly in the American vernacular.
Introduction and Text of “Those Winter Sundays”
Robert Hayden’s speaker in this nearly perfect innovative sonnet “Those Winter Sundays” is a man reflecting on his attitude and behavior during his childhood. Specifically, the speaker is remembering and dramatizing an event that involved his father. He comes to the conclusion that he should have behaved more kindly and respectfully toward his father who did so much for him.
Looking back at childish ways often reveals immature attitudes and behaviors. Such reminiscing can lead to feelings of guilt and recrimination for the immature behavior and selfish attitudes that are so common to youth. But those feelings prompted by contrasting an adult’s understanding to a child’s understanding need to be assuaged by forgiveness and knowledge of the human condition.
The speaker in this poem shows a mature, well-balanced attitude regarding his younger self that corrects the human tendency to castigate that younger self. He realizes that if he had known better he would have behaved better.
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Robert Hayden reading “Those Winter Sundays”
Commentary on “Those Winter Sundays”
This excellent sonnet “Those Winter Sundays” is one of the best poems written in the English language, and Robert Hayden is one the finest poets writing in the American vernacular.
First Stanza: The Plain Truth
Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
The speaker begins by reporting the unvarnished fact that even on Sundays, the day that most people are apt to sleep in, his father as usual “got up early.” The father got up early and put on his clothes in a very cold house. The father then built the fire in the stove that would warm the rooms to make it comfortable for the rest of the family to rise without suffering the cold that the father had done.
The speaker refers to the kind of cold that the house experienced as “blueblack.” That descriptor provides an intense image that renders that cold as biting and bitter. That the cold was so intense further strengthens the love and affection that the father felt for his family, and the misery he was willing to suffer in order to make life more comfortable for his loved ones.
Even though the father had worked hard during the week to the point of having to suffer “cracked hands” from all his hard labor, the father still without pause got up even on Sundays to assure that his family’s comfort was provided. The image “made / banked fires blaze” arises from the custom of piling up wood inside the stove or fireplace to keep a low-level fire smoldering for long periods of time, such as over night.
This procedure then makes it easier for the wood to blaze into full flames faster than its would have done without the banking. Thus, the fire is made faster and more easily in the morning when it is most necessary. The poet has created a speaker whose freshness of language infuses his message with all of the characteristics of a dramatic masterpiece. The images build, dramatizing as well as relaying information, implying attitudes as well as stating them.
The poet’s skill has created a well-placed infusion of feeling, as he has his speaker plainly claim, referring to the father, “No one ever thanked him.” The speaker’s remorse is revealed; he makes it clear that he wishes he had thanked his father for his sacrifices, but alas, he did not. Furthermore, no one did, and that omission now grieves the adult as he looks back on the situation.
Second Stanza: The Duties of a Father
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Because of the father’s loving attention, the speaker could stay in bed warm and snug until the house was no longer suffering that “blueblack” cold but instead was all toasty warm. After the speaker wakes up but while still in bed, he can hear the cold being driven out of the house. He describes what he hears as “splintering, breaking.”
Again, the poet has infused a marvelous set of images that intensifies the meaning and skillfully dramatizes the events of this nearly perfect sonnet. What the speaker hears literally is his father chopping up wood, but to the child-speaker’s ears, it seemed as though the cold were literally being cracked and broken.
After the father had heated the house, he would call for his son to get up and get dressed. The speaker would do so, although “slowly.” Even though he was only a child, he always seemed to remain aware of the “chronic angers of that house.” The line “fearing the chronic angers of that house” seems to leave open some frightening possibilities for interpretation, and as might be expected, some critics have assumed that those angers signal an abusive father.
But such an interpretation makes no sense, however, unless one has overlooked the main message of the poem. The speaker would not likely be focusing on thanking the father, if he were testifying that the father had been an abuser. The “angers of the house” more likely refer to the house itself.
It likely had other issues beside the morning cold, for example, it might have had broken windows, leaky or noisy pipes, rodents, shabby furniture, or perhaps the floor-boards creaked when walked upon, or the roof leaked when it rained. After all, the speaker does designate that those angers belonged to the “house,” not to his father or to any other family member or resident of the house.
If meaning in a poem is derived from the poet’s biography, the poet’s actual meaning in the poem can become skewed. Readers must always look first and foremost to the poem for its meaning, not at the biography of the poet.
Third Stanza: The Indifference of Youth
Speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?
In the final stanza, the speaker demonstrates that he now understands the sacrifices his father made for him and the rest of the family. Undeniably, the speaker feels shame that he often spoke so “indifferently” to this father. The speaker thus suggests that if he could go back and correct that mistake, he would speak to his father with the love and devotion that he now realizes the father deserved.
Not only had the father “driven out the cold” for him and the rest of the family, but he had also polished the speaker’s shoes. These tokens of love become symbols for all of the other duties that the father must have performed for the family. It is quite likely that the father also cooked breakfast of this son, drove him to church or school, or to wherever the son needed to go.
The speaker then asserts his all important remark, framing it as a question: “What did I know, what did I know / of love’s austere and lonely offices?” Far from excusing his childhood behavior, the speaker is, instead, very eloquently explaining it: he was just a child. And as a child, he did not have the maturity to perceive that his father was performing selfless acts. Few, if any, children are ever blessed with such foresight.
Because the speaker repeats the question “what did I know?,” he is emphasizing his childhood lack of awareness. The speaker simply did not know what it was like to be a father, with the responsibilities of caring for children and running a household, of going to work each week-day to keep the family fed, clothed, and warm with a roof over their heads.
If the speaker had been capable of processing all of this complex, adult activity, he would have behaved differently—not “indifferently” toward his father. With his adult awareness though maturity, the speaker is now able to offer a corrective to all those who have experienced those same feelings of guilt for past childhood immaturity.
Why should any adult continue to suffer from the guilt and recrimination over childhood immaturity when it is so simple?: Children simply do not know any better. Children cannot behave in ways that remain out of their range of knowledge.
Once they do know better as mature adults, and though they may continue to wish they had done better, they should be able to leave off the abject guilt and get on with their lives. This poem’s spiritual level of thought and feeling renders it the marvelous, nearly perfect poem that it is.
The poet’s skill in crafting his dramatic sonnet filled with poignant memories that offer universal succor to readers elevates its stature to the nearly sublime. Such a poetic achievement remains rare in 20th century secular poetry, so thoroughly infused with the postmodern muck of unprompted anger and the inability to recognize and accept truth.
Amanda Gorman’s “For Renee Nicole Good” tries to be an elegy, but it falters in displaying contrived diction, strained prosody, clichéd imagery, and manipulative historical framing—all compromising its position as an elegiac form.
Introduction and Text of “For Renee Nicole Good”
Spurred on by the January 7, 2026, incident in which Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, inaugural poetry reader Amanda Gorman has focused on the unfortunate event for moral and political effect, prioritizing rhetoric over grief and glossing over a complex historical reality.
Gorman’s piece commemorates Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman, who was killed during a federal immigration enforcement operation. The incident, widely reported in major media, involved Good ramming her 4,000-pound Honda Pilot into an ICE officer, causing him to suffer internal injuries. Allegedly, the officer reacted by shooting Good in self-defense.
Political and media pundits have continued to debate federal characterizations of her actions, including claims that labeled her a “domestic terrorist.” Talking heads on various media outlets have continued to exploit the dismal affair by interpreting the videos of the event to fit their own narratives.
Gorman’s piece attempts to position Good’s death as the result of systemic failure couched in moral urgency; however, the literary execution of the piece weakens Gorman aim at elegy. The rime is forced and uneven, diction is inflated and often awkward, and imagery slips into abstraction or cliché.
The use of figurative language remains symbolic and moralistic, rather than being grounded in Good’s specific circumstances. While the piece attempts elegiac elevation, its rhetorical ornamentation and moral abstraction produce nothing more than mere posturing.
The piece remains merely decorative verse lacking emotional precision or nuanced engagement with historical fact. The piece remains an excellent example of “miselegy”—not elegy.
For Renee Nicole Good
Killed by I.C.E. on January 7, 2026
They say she is no more, That there her absence roars, Blood-blown like a rose. Iced wheels flinched & froze. Now, bare riot of candles, Dark fury of flowers, Pure howling of hymns.
If for us she arose, Somewhere, in the pitched deep of our grief, Crouches our power, The howl where we begin, Straining upon the edge of the crooked crater Of the worst of what we’ve been.
Change is only possible, & all the greater, When the labour & bitter anger of our neighbors Is moved by the love & better angels of our nature.
What they call death & void, We know is breath & voice; In the end, gorgeously, Endures our enormity.
You could believe departed to be the dawn When the blank night has so long stood. But our bright-fled angels will never be fully gone, When they forever are so fiercely Good.
Commentary on “For Renee Nicole Good”
Amanda Gorman’s piece is rhetorically inflated and abstract, inflating symbolic moral critique over concrete grief. It glosses over key facts and turns personal tragedy into generalized indictment. The result is both stylistic weakness and historical distortion.
First Movement: “They say she is no more”
They say she is no more, That there her absence roars, Blood-blown like a rose. Iced wheels flinched & froze. Now, bare riot of candles, Dark fury of flowers, Pure howling of hymns.
If for us she arose, Somewhere, in the pitched deep of our grief, Crouches our power, The howl where we begin, Straining upon the edge of the crooked crater Of the worst of what we’ve been.
The piece fails as elegy from its opening lines, with vagueness masquerading as intensity. The vague claim—“They say she is no more”—screams out as a slack, secondhand construction. The nondescript, distancing phrase “they say” bypasses the elegist’s most important obligation—to bear direct witness to loss.
Compare this avoidance to the stark authority of Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” or even a simple declarative statement such as “She is dead”: the circumlocution here drains the death of immediacy before the piece has properly begun.
The use of figurative language compounds the failure. “Blood-blown like a rose” aspires to vivid compression but achieves only decorative incongruity: ”blood-blown” suggests violence, yet the rose is so overworked a poetic symbol that it softens rather than sharpens what ought to be a disturbing image. Thus, the two terms are pitted against each other.
Similarly, “Iced wheels flinched & froze” is so obscure that it remains meaninglessness: wheels, obviously belong to the 4000 pound vehicle, but wheels do not flinch. The verb “flinch” describes a human reaction of nervousness, and to assign wheels this involuntary recoil is to sentimentalize machinery rather than illuminate human grief.
The lines “bare riot of candles, / Dark fury of flowers, / Pure howling of hymns” reveal another besetting weakness: the piece’s reliance on oxymoronic abstract nouns to manufacture feeling it has not earned. A riot is not bare; fury is not dark in any illuminating sense; howling is not pure; see Malcolm M. Sedam’s appraisal of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.”
These contradictions do not exert a useful tension; instead, they simply hint at emotional extremes without grounding them in any specific detail of the occasion, the mourners, or the deceased. Readers learn nothing about who this woman was or who weeps for her.
The closing lines’ prosody also undermines its ambitions. The lines “Crouches our power, / The howl where we begin” strain for prophetic weight but the inversion “crouches our power” is merely awkward, and “the howl where we begin” is so abstract as to be empty—begin what?
The final image of “the crooked crater / Of the worst of what we’ve been” gestures at collective historical shame but without any specific referent. Although this piece concerns a real death in a specific circumstance—one involving an officer’s injury and reaction of likely self-defense, the needed context is entirely absent.
Elegy, at its best, as in Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats,” earns any generalization by first anchoring itself in specificity. This piece attempts the reverse, and the result is rhetoric without a foundation that is, nevertheless, loud, shapeless, unmoved and unmoving.
Second Movement: “Change is only possible”
Change is only possible, & all the greater, When the labour & bitter anger of our neighbors Is moved by the love & better angels of our nature.
What they call death & void, We know is breath & voice; In the end, gorgeously, Endures our enormity.
The second movement opens with a conditional proposition in the first stanza of the movement, and this proposal immediately reveals the piece’s central confusion of purpose: elegy is not argument. The conditional “when” converts mourning to a political syllogism: grief is admissible only insofar as it produces the correct social outcome. The dead woman has already been subordinated to a thesis.
The phrase “better angels of our nature” compounds the problem by alluding to Lincoln’s famous phrase without earning it. In Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, the phrase carried the weight of a young nation on the verge of civil war; here it is borrowed to lend gravitas to what is essentially a political slogan. The allusion does not illuminate; it appropriates.
The lines “What they call death & void, / We know is breath & voice” represent the most telling failure in the passage. The opposition of “they” and “we” divides the world into the politically benighted and the enlightened speaker’s community, and in doing so it abandons the elegiac mode entirely.
Elegy confronts death as an irreducible, universal fact, intrinsic to the human condition; it does not reframe death as a misperception held by ideological opponents. To argue that death is not merely what the unenlightened “call” it is not consolation; it is evasion dressed as affirmation.
The closing couplet reaches for the lapidary but lands in obscurity. “Enormity” in precise usage means moral outrage or wickedness, which may be the intended meaning, but then “gorgeously” becomes grotesque in the wrong way, not productively paradoxical but simply muddled.
If “enormity” is used loosely to mean vastness or magnitude, the line collapses into vague self-congratulation: we are very large, and we endure. Neither reading redeems the couplet, and neither brings the reader any closer to a specific dead woman, her specific life, or the specific circumstances of her death. The piece has fully exchanged the particular for the rhetorical, and what endures is not grief but posture.
Third Movement: “You could believe departed to be the dawn”
You could believe departed to be the dawn When the blank night has so long stood. But our bright-fled angels will never be fully gone, When they forever are so fiercely Good.
The final movement opens with a conditional that immediately points to its own uncertainty: “You could believe departed to be the dawn.” The addition of the verb “believe” does not signal the tentativeness of honest doubt; it is the tentativeness of a versifier who knows the metaphor is not working.
That time of day known as dawn as a poetic device for death’s transcendence is among the most exhausted—therefore clichéd—resources in the elegiac tradition, and to introduce it with “you could believe” rather than committing to it fully exposes an acknowledgment of its staleness. The line asks readers to entertain a consolation that the piece itself does not fully trust.
The line “The blank night has so long stood” attempts to deepen the light-and-darkness opposition but “blank” is doing no useful work here. Night is characterized only by the absence of qualities, which is itself an absence of imagination.
Compare the productive darkness in elegies that have earned their consolations through prior engagement with specific grief. For example, Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” lingers over the obscurity and stifled potential of the rural dead before arriving at its muted, hard‑won consolations. The darkness in Gorman’s piece has no particular texture because the woman mourned has never been rendered particular.
The line “Our bright-fled angels” is symptomatic of the movement’s broader failure. The compound adjective “bright-fled” strains for originality but produces only a vague luminous blur. Readers cannot see these angels, cannot locate them, cannot feel their specific absence. And “angels,” used here for the second time in the piece, has by this point become the piece’s default finger pointing toward the transcendent, deployed only wherever the sentiment runs short of concrete reality.
The closing line “When they forever are so fiercely Good” makes the piece’s central substitution explicit and, in doing so, exposes its paucity. The capitalization of “Good” collapses the woman’s surname into a moral abstraction, transforming a specific human being into an emblem of virtue—a claim which is never realized.
This kind of sleight-of-hand is the opposite of what elegy requires. The great elegies, including Milton’s “Lycidas,” Tennyson’s “In Memoriam A. H. H,” and Wilcox’s “The Queen’s Last Ride,” depend upon the irreplaceable particularity of the lost individual.
Here, the decedent’s’ name is conscripted into the piece’s rhetorical argument: she is “Good” [good]; therefore, her death indicts a system that is not. The wordplay, however well-intentioned, subordinates the woman’s personhood to her usefulness as a symbol, which is precisely the charge that the piece is leveling at the broader social forces it purports to critique.
Taken as a whole, “For Renee Nicole Good” fails as elegy because its every formal and figurative decision moves away from the particular and toward the general, away from grief and toward argument, away from the irreducibly human fact of one woman’s death and toward the consolations of political and moral statement.
Doggerel is not merely a matter of clumsy versification; it is verse that reaches beyond its own imaginative and emotional resources. This piece reaches very far and grasps nothing of substance.
Image: Thomas Gray – Portrait by John Giles Eccardt, oil on canvas, 1747-1748
Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
Thomas Gray’s elegy describes a beautiful scene in the country landscape, as the speaker muses upon the life and death of rustic, simple folk in the pastoral setting.
Introduction and Text of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” features 32 quatrains that naturally separate into eight self-contained movements. The final movement is a lovely epitaph devoted to an unknown country youth.
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such, as wand’ring near her secret bower, Molest her ancient solitary reign.
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mold’ring heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn The swallow twitt’ring from the straw-built shed, The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire’s return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomps of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, Await alike th’ inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honor’s voice provoke the silent dust, Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll; Chill penury repressed their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.
Th’ applause of listening senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation’s eyes,
Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined; Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind.
The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride With incense kindled at the muse’s flame.
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learned to stray; Along the cool requestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Yet ev’n these bones from insult to protect Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rimes and shapeless sculpture decked, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
Their name, their years, spelt by th’ unlettered muse, The place of fame and elegy supply: And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist to die.
For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e’er resigned, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing ling’ring look behind?
On some fond breast the parting soul relies, Some pious drops the closing eye requires; Ev’n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, Ev’n in our ashes live their wonted fires.
For thee, who mindful of th’ unhonored dead Dost in these lines their artless tale relate; If chance, by lonely contemplation led, Some kindred Spirit shall inquire thy fate,
Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, “Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Brushing with hasty steps the dews away To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
“There at the foot of yonder nodding beech That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noontide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
“Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Mutt’ring his wayward fancies he would rove, Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.
“One morn I missed him on the customed hill, Along the heath and near his fav’rite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;
“The next with dirges due in sad array Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne. Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.”
The Epitaph
Here rests his head upon the lap of earth A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown; Fair science frown’d not on his humble birth, And melancholy mark’d him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere; Heaven did a recompense as largely send: He gave to misery all he had, a tear, He gain’d from heaven,’twas all he wish’d, a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his father and his God.
Reading
Commentary on “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
Thomas Gray’s speaker is offering a tribute to the simply folk who tended the land in this beautiful scene of country landscape. The speaker is musing upon the life and death of these rustic, simple folk in the pastoral, rustic setting.
First Movement: Serene Landscape
In the opening movement, the speaker describes the serene landscape surrounding the cemetery which he will be visiting. A herd of cows is moving slowly over the meadow. A farmer is leaving his plowing to head home, “leaving the world to darkness and to” the speaker.
It is dusk and the landscape seems to glimmer in the still air. Except for a few complaining beetles and an “moping owl,” all is quiet. The speaker approaches the graves of the village “forefathers,” who rest beneath “rugged elms.”
Second Movement: No More Cultivation
Those resting forefathers will never again be roused by the noise of the twitter of swallows or the call of the roosters. They will never again be experiencing their home life with “blazing hearth,” care of the wives, and interaction with their children. No longer will the land that they cultivated be turned by their plow. No more will the fields be tended by their careful, cheerful hands.
Third Movement: Simple Folk
These men were simple folk who did not seek ambition trade and fame. They lived, loved, farmed their land and enjoyed the rustic life. The speaker wishes to forestall any negative criticism of these simple farmers, as such folk are often looked down upon by city-folk, calling them rubes and provincials.
But the speaker makes it clear that no matter how high and mighty the ambitious become, they all end up in the same place as these simple folk because “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
The speaker speculates that among these country folk there might even be those who could have easily performed the tasks of emperors or that of talented lyre playing poets. And perhaps there were those who did harbor such ambitions.
Fourth Movement: Unspoiled by Social Ills
In the fourth movement, the speaker elaborates on his assertion from the third movement. Because these rustic men never became enamored by knowledge of seeking ambitious titles and such, they remained unspoiled by many of the ills of society.
They remained like uncultured gems and flowers that were never seen but flourished. There might have been those who could have performed as a Milton or a Cromwell, or who could have served in government, or even conquered lands, thus adding their names to the nation’s historical record.
Fifth Movement: The Life Within
The speaker now concedes that if among these gentle folk some dark tendencies prevailed, their way of life precluded their acting upon those evil tendencies. They were “Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne.” Because they lived and moved “Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,” they experienced a life wherein, “Their sober wishes never learned to stray.”
They were, in fact, protected. However, some of the grave markers profess “uncouth rimes and shapeless sculpture.” This fact, while not dismaying, does arouse a “sigh” in the passersby.
Sixth Movement: Honoring the Rustic Dead
The speaker has noted that some of the names of the interred have been displayed by the “unlettered,” meaning that they are misspelled. But the gravestone also contained many biblical passages which “teach the rustic moralist to die.”
These “unhonored dead,” however, deserve to be honored, at least, by a reverent thought or prayer. If their history must remain hidden, at least a thought or two sent their way would give them honor as “some kindred Spirit shall inquire” about their lives.
Seventh Movement: A Rustic Soliloquy
In the seventh movement, the speaker composes a likely soliloquy by “some hoary-headed swain,” who might share a brief summary of one of the rustic’s manner, where he had roamed, how he might behaved, what he might have thought as he made his way through his day.
Then the rustic was missed and replaced by another like him. The imaginary speaker reports that they bore his man “through the church-way path.” and the speaker asks his listener to read the song that is engraved on the man’s “stone beneath yon aged thorn.”
Eighth Movement: Simple Country Folk
The final three quatrains making up the final movement and titled, “The Epitaph,” is dedicated to “A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown.” The youth “rests his head upon the lap of earth.” He represents the simple country folk who are of “humble birth.”
He laughed, he cried, and he had a “soul sincere.” To honor him, one need only acknowledge his having existed and realize that he now rests upon the “bosom of his father and his God.”
Walt Whitman in Camden, N.J., c. 1891. (Colorised black and white print). Creator: Thomas Eakins. (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)
Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
Walt Whitman’s admiration for President Lincoln is dramatized in the poet’s elegy “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” mourning the death while celebrating the presidency of the sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln.
Introduction and Text of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
In Walt Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” the speaker laments the death of President Lincoln, but he does much more than merely offer his own sad and melancholy state of mind. This speaker creates a sacred myth through which he not only offers a tribute to the fallen president but also creates a symbolic triad that will henceforth bring readers’ and listeners’ attention to the momentous event.
The speaker also composes a “Death Carol,” in which rests the irony of elevating death from the lamentation it usually brings for a celebrated friend whom all suffering humanity can afford the fealty of welcome.
It might be observed that poet Walt Whitman sectioned his elegy into 16 parts, symbolizing the fact that Abraham Lincoln, the heroic subject of the poem, had served as the sixteenth president of the United States.
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love.
2
O powerful western fallen star! O shades of night—O moody, tearful night! O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.
3 In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings, Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard, With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with its flower I break.
4
In the swamp in secluded recesses, A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary the thrush, The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, Sings by himself a song.
Song of the bleeding throat, Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know, If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.)
5
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities, Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep’d from the ground, spotting the gray debris, Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass, Passing the yellow-spear’d wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen, Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards, Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave, Night and day journeys a coffin
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets, Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land, With the pomp of the inloop’d flags with the cities draped in black, With the show of the States themselves as of crape-veil’d women standing, With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night, With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads, With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces, With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn, With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour’d around the coffin, The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs—where amid these you journey, With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang, Here, coffin that slowly passes, I give you my sprig of lilac.
7
(Nor for you, for one alone, Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring, For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses, O death, I cover you over with roses and early lilies, But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first, Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes, With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, For you and the coffins all of you O death.)
8
O western orb sailing the heaven, Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk’d, As I walk’d in silence the transparent shadowy night, As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night, As you droop’d from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other stars all look’d on,) As we wander’d together the solemn night, (for something I know not what kept me from sleep,) As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you were of woe, As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night, As I watch’d where you pass’d and was lost in the netherward black of the night, As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb, Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the swamp, O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call, I hear, I come presently, I understand you, But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain’d me, The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
10
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved? And how shall I deck my song for the large sweet soul that has gone? And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
Sea-winds blown from east and west, Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies meeting, These and with these and the breath of my chant, I’ll perfume the grave of him I love.
11
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls? And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls, To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes, With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright, With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air, With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific, In the distance the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there, With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows, And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys, And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.
12
Lo, body and soul—this land, My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships, The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio’s shores and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies cover’d with grass and corn.
Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty, The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes, The gentle soft-born measureless light, The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill’d noon, The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars, Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13
Sing on, sing on you gray-brown bird, Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes, Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song, Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid and free and tender! O wild and loose to my soul—O wondrous singer! You only I hear—yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,) Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
14
Now while I sat in the day and look’d forth, In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops, In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests, In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb’d winds and the storms,) Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women, The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail’d, And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor, And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages, And the streets how their throbbings throbb’d, and the cities pent—lo, then and there, Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest, Appear’d the cloud, appear’d the long black trail, And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me, And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me, And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions, I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not, Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness, To the solemn shadowy cedars and ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest receiv’d me, The gray-brown bird I know receiv’d us comrades three, And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
From deep secluded recesses, From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still, Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the carol rapt me, As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night, And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
Death Carol
Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later delicate death.
Prais’d be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise! For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach strong deliveress, When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead, Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee, Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.
From me to thee glad serenades, Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee, And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting, And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
The night in silence under many a star, The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know, And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil’d death, And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide, Over the dense-pack’d cities all and the teeming wharves and ways, I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.
15
To the tally of my soul, Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird, With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.
Loud in the pines and cedars dim, Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume, And I with my comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed, As to long panoramas of visions.
And I saw askant the armies, I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags, Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierc’d with missiles I saw them, And carried hither and yon through the smoke, and torn and bloody, And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (and all in silence,) And the staffs all splinter’d and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them, And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them, I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war, But I saw they were not as was thought, They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not, The living remain’d and suffer’d, the mother suffer’d, And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer’d, And the armies that remain’d suffer’d.
16
Passing the visions, passing the night Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands, Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul, Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song, As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night, Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy, Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven, As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses, Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves, I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
I cease from my song for thee, From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee, O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night, The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird, And the tallying chant, the echo arous’d in my soul, With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe, With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird, Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well, For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake, Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul, There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
Commentary on “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”
Walt Whitman was deeply affected by the assassination of President Lincoln on April 14, 1865. The poet’s admiration is dramatized in his elegy as it emphasizes three symbols: a lilac, a star, and a bird.
First Movement 1-6: Springtime when Lilacs Bloom
The speaker begins by setting the time frame in spring when lilacs bloom. He is in mourning and suggests that Americans will continue to mourn this time of year, when three events continue to come together: the lilacs bloom, the star Venus appears, and the speaker’s thoughts of the president he venerated return.
The lilacs and the star of Venus immediately become symbolic of the speaker’s feelings and the momentous event that has engendered them. In the second section of the first movement, the speaker offers a set of keening laments prefaced by “O”:
O powerful western fallen star! O shades of night—O moody, tearful night! O great star disappear’d—O the black murk that hides the star! O cruel hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul of me! O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.
Each keen grows more intense as it progresses to the final, ” O hard surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.” He picks a sprig of lilac whose leaves are heart-shaped. This act indicates that the lilac will henceforth become symbolic for the speaker; the lilac will symbolize the love the speaker bears for the fallen president.
The speaker then introduces the singing hermit thrush whose song will elevate the bird to symbolic significance for the speaker, as well as the lilacs and star. In the final two sections of the first movement, the speaker describes the landscape through which President Lincoln’s casketed body moved to its final resting place in Illinois.
Second Movement 7: The Symbolic Offering
The second movement consists of a parenthetical offering of flowers to the casketed corpse of the president but also suggests that the speaker would overlay the coffins of all the war dead with roses and lilies, “But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first.”
Again, the suggestion that the lilac will remain a symbol because it is the first flower to bloom every spring. While showering the coffins of the fallen, the speaker says he will “chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.”
Third Movement 8-9: The Star of Venus
The speaker now confronts the “western orb” that star of Venus that he had observed a month earlier. He imagines that the symbolic star had been speaking to him of the tragic events to come.
The star seemed to drop to the speaker’s side as the other stars watched. The speaker felt a sadness as the star “drops in the night, and was gone.” Now that the month has passed, the speaker feels that he was being forewarned by the symbolic star.
The speaker says that the “star of my departing comrade hold and detains me,” as he addresses the “singer bashful and tender,” that is, the hermit thrush who sings his solitary song from the covering of leaves.
Fourth Movement 10-13: A Personal Shrine to a Slain President
The speaker now muses on how he will be able to “warble . . . for the dead one there I loved.” He continues to lament but knows he must compose a “song for the large sweet soul that has gone.”
The speaker then considers what he will “hang on the chamber walls,” indicating he will erect a personal shrine to the slain president. He offers a number of items that he feels must decorate that shrine, as he catalogues them; for example, “Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes.”
The famous Whitman catalogue finds its way into several movements of this elegy. As it is the president of the country who has died, the speaker places scenes from the country in his elegy:
Lo, body and soul—this land, My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships,The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio’s shores and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies cover’d with grass and corn.
The speaker then commands the bird to sing as he prepares to offer a “Death Carol” in the next movement.
Fifth Movement 14: A Hymn to Death
The speaker creates a moving tribute to the president by replacing the sorrow of death with the dignity and necessity of death. Death becomes a friend who gives respite to the weary body—a fact often referenced by the “Father of Yoga in the West” Paramahansa Yogananda.
The speaker prefaces his “Death Carol” with a scene of himself walking between two friends: “knowledge of death” walked on one side of the speaker, and the “thought of death” occupied the other.
The “Death Carol” virtually lovingly addresses death, inviting it to “come lovely and soothing death.” He welcomes death to “undulate round the world.” He has almost fully accepted that death comes “in the day, in the night, to all, to each, / Sooner or later.” The speaker’s lament has transformed death from a dreaded event to a sacred, sweet one to which he will float a song full of joy.
Sixth Movement 15-16: Entwining the Images and Symbols
The speaker credits the bird with the composition of the “Death Carol.” This crediting indicates that the speaker had become so closely in tune with the warbling bird that he cognizes a hymn from the singing.
The speaker then catalogues scenes that he had actually witnessed as he traveled the battlefields of the war during which time he had nursed the wounded and dying. He saw “battle-corpses, myriads of them.”
But he finally realizes something vital to the awareness of the reality of death: “. . . I saw they were not as was thought, / They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer’d not.” The speaker realized that it is the living who suffer the death of the deceased and not the deceased, who remained, “fully at rest.”
The speaker’s parting words offer his summation of the entwined images that now have become and will retain their symbolic significance for the speaker: “For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake, / Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul.”
The speaker in Malcolm M. Sedam’s “Desafinado” holds the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg accountable for what the speaker deems to be the attempted degradation of the soul of humanity.
Introduction with Text of “Desafinado”
The speaker in Malcolm M. Sedam’s “Desafinado” belongs to that group of readers who finds little to no literary value in Ginsberg’s rant. He is thus holding the Beat poet accountable for what the speaker deems to be the attempted degradation of the soul of humanity.
Written in 1955 and published in late 1956, the long poem “Howl” from Allen Ginsberg’s collection, Howl and Other Poems, caused a stir that ultimately brought the book’s publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, founder of City Lights Bookstore, to trial for obscenity [1]. The poem dramatizes certain sex acts; for example, “those who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy.”
The Ginsberg poem also spewed its glowing approval of illegal drug use. Ultimately, Ferlinghetti was not convicted of his alleged crime of obscenity. Nine expert witnesses, including literature professors, editors and book reviewers from the San Francisco Examiner and The New York Times testified that the work had literary value, that is, it offered “a significant and enduring contribution to society and literature.” They also testified that it was a “prophetic work” and “thoroughly honest.”
However, since that time, traditionally many readers [2], including teachers, parents, critics [3], and other literary scholars [4] have resisted the notion that Ginsberg’s hysterics had literary merit.
(One might note that the quotation above from the poem is not welcome on a number of websites even in the 21st century; the now defunct site to which I used to post articles required the block of full spelling of the offending words.)
The poem’s main claim to fame has always been its confrontational struggle with dignity and morality, not its literary value.
Desafinado
(For Allen Ginsberg, et al)
Through this state and on to Kansas more black than May’s tornadoes showering a debris of art — I saw you coming long before you came in paths of twisted fear and hate and dread, uprooted, despising all judgment which is not to say that the bourgeois should not be judged but by whom and by what, junkies, queers, and rot who sit on their haunches and howl that the race should be free for pot and horny honesty which I would buy if a crisis were ever solved in grossness and minor resolve but for whom and for what?
I protest your protest it’s hairy irrelevancy, I, who am more anxious than you more plaintive than you more confused than you having more at stake an investment in humanity.
Reading
Commentary on “Desafinado”
Out of touch with humanity, but certainly spouting the postmodern ethos, Ginsberg’s work finds its ultimate critic in Sedam’s “Desafinado.”
Flat or Off Key
The musical term “desafinado” denotes an out-of-tune sound; a note that is flat or off key may be labeled “desafinado.” Thus, Sedam’s speaker in his poem “Desafinado” from The Man in Motion insists that the Beat poets, Ginsberg and his ilk, are definitely out of tune with human dignity and morality. Featuring Sedam’s signature indented lines, the poem is displayed in free-verse and in twenty-four lines.
It seems likely that the speaker of the poem is reacting to having attended a poetry reading wherein one or more of the scandalous Beats—perhaps even Ginsberg himself—have performed their wares. The speaker claims that Ginsberg in his travels through the mid-west is “showering a debris of art.” That debris is blacker than the tornadoes that assault the landscape in May.
Literarily Littering the Minds
The speaker suggests that the Ginsberg “art” litters the mind in a way that even the devastating tornadoes fail to equal across middle America. The speaker understands that influence on the mind of an individual and thereby society can have far reaching consequences.
Cleaning up the damages from damaged minds far exceeds that of cleaning up the damage hurled by strong winds in spring. The speaker berates the Beat poet and his ilk for degrading the art of poetry by dragging it down paths of hatred which is twisted with fear and unhinged from reality. Also these protestors hate being judged, criticized, corrected, or held to any traditional standards.
The speaker asserts that he does not believe that the “bourgeoisie” is perfect, nor is it thereby above judgment. However, he forces out the question regarding who is really able and qualified to make those judgments about the middle class. The speaker affirms that such judgment will never be made effectively by societal degeneracy.
If one finds the speaker’s name-calling off-putting, one must ask, is it name-calling or simply naming? Is he not accurate in describing the characters who are appearing in the works of Ginsberg and the Beats?
What Redeeming Value?
According to this speaker, the Ginsbergian ilk does not offer anything useful to the society from which they benefit greatly. Those of that ilk continue to “sit on their haunches and howl / that the race should be free for pot / and horny honesty.”
The speaker is, of course, alluding to Ginsberg’s infamous “Howl,” which was coming into prominence in the early 1960s in the United States, as the Sixties decadence was setting in. The speaker asserts that he might be able to agree with some of the radicals’ protesting moral standards if such protest ever solved any of society’s problems.
The speaker, however, deems that the Beats’ low-energy “resolve” and the grossness of the bellyachers as they just “sit on their haunches and howl” cannot, in fact, alter society and cannot benefit humanity.
The speaker then declaims that he protests against their protests. The irrelevance of those long-haired hippies, those who merely howl while sitting on their butts cannot convince this speaker of any righteousness of their stance. This speaker revolts against the moral corruption of these dopers.
The speaker then further supports his claims by emphasizing his own invested interest in a just and moral society. He insists that he remains even more agitated, melancholy, and befuddled than those hairy protestors.
One Man’s Investment in Humanity
The speaker finally punches his last punch attempting to knock out the feeble but brazen howling cries of the hairy, dirty doping protesters, whose selfish self-aggrandizing leads only to a society of decay. Instead of only a selfish concern, this speaker’s stake is much higher: he professes that he struggles mightily because for him what is at stake is his “investment in humanity.”
Even though this speaker is aware that he cannot vanquish the debauchery that is on its way, leaking into the culture like a punctured sewer pipe, he knows he can register his own protest against the moral equivalency that is leading to the degeneracy of the next generation. Of course, the period known as the hippy sixties would continue down its fatalist path, yet where it would lead would remain open for discussion at the time of this poet’s writing.
My Personal Reflection on Ginsberg’s “Howl”
Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” can arguably be considered to have ushered in the onslaught of postmodernism in America. However, this work as a piece of literature has stood the test of time as a game changer in literature, whether one agrees that the game needed to be changed or not.
The style of this slack-jawed piece is loosely reminiscent of that of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, even though Ginsberg’s obscene posture is anathema to Whitman’s measured, disciplined stance, as well as to that of the poet of “Desafinado.”
In my personal opinion, what saves “Howl” from becoming just a piece of trash to assign to the dustbin of literary history—as the Sedamian speaker’s ethos would suggest—is that it offers a view of a segment of American life.
The poem reveals the mindset dedicated to the aberrant life styles that a significant portion of American society would never be able to experience otherwise. Most of America—and likely even the entire globe—would never consider taking the kinds of trips taken by the Beats.
Information can be useful, whether one agrees with it or not, nay, even if the work is nonsensical or brushed through with immorality, nihilism, and naïveté. And while poetry’s first function is not to impart empirical information, it does rely on empirical information to empower its focus on the human experience in feeling and emotion.
A piece of literature based on information that is abominable and morally repugnant in its content offers the opportunity explain to children and students that the behavior in the work should be disdained, discouraged, and avoided.
Censorship vs Editorial Choice
The first commandment regarding the written word should be “Thou shalt NOT censor!” Unless a discourse is calling for active violence against a person or property, censorship should always remain off the table. Despite the possible, ultimate degradation and depravity of any text, nothing should be censored.
Editorial choice regarding the fitness of any text for any publication does not become censorship, unless the editor is denying the work based on prejudice, political bias, or personal preference. The discussion of ideas with which an editor does not agree does not give the editor the moral right to censor.
Essentially, censorship usually bans ideas not necessarily the form in which those ideas are delivered. If the form, including the use of grammar and mechanics, is faulty, the editor has the duty to reject for publication the submitted piece, as faulty grammar and lax mechanics often suggest that the ideas may be weak as well.
The experienced, knowledgable editor should possess and sustain the resources to determine the difference between a few insignificant mechanical errors and those that suggest a sloppy writer with sloppy thoughts.
But if the editor rejects or devalues a piece simply because s/he despises the politics, societal attitudes, or spiritual tradition of the writer, then that rejection would equal censorship, which is an abomination and a danger to a free people.
Original Poems: “Dust of a Baptist” and “Southern Woman” – A Tribute to My Mother
Mother’s Day always reminds me the beautiful soul, who was my own belovèd earthly mother. Here is my musing tribute to her along with two original poems that she has inspired. I wondered why she called a certain wildflower “flags”—now I think I know.
Daylilies, aka “The Grand Old Flag”
You’ve seen them growing abundantly out in fields, along river banks and old country roads, even along busy highways and Interstates. They are orange wild flowers known as Daylilies.
They are hardy and so abundant that some folks feel they are intrusive and seek to stop their spreading abundance. Such an attitude baffles me because I have always loved those flowers, and I have always wondered why my mother called them “flags.”
I did not know until recently that they were a type of Daylily, and I had no name for them except what my mother called them. Why did she call them “flags”? I think I now know.
An Emily Dickinson Poem
I was writing a commentary on Emily Dickinson’s poem “All these my banners be” (number 22 in Thomas H. Johnson’s The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson), which is a fascinating tribute to her love of nature (especially flowers). But tricky Dickinson once again is writing on the two distinct levels as poetry nearly always does. On the literal level, she is addressing flowers and on the figurative level she is addressing her little creations—her poems.
The controlling metaphor employed by Dickinson this poem is “banners,” which is another term for “flags.” I decided to do a little research on the term “flags” as flowers and soon was directed to the Daylily. On several sites the phrase, “The Grand Old Flag,” appears next the name of the Daylily, for example, here and here.
Things My Mommy Taught Me
I now feel safe in assuming that the name “flags” for the common Orange Daylily stems from certain types of Daylilies boasting the appellation, “The Grand Old Fag.” I’m sure my mother heard her mother or other relatives call those flowers “flags.” And thus that remained the term for them that she had and passed on to me.
As I write my commentaries about poems, from time to time, I become fascinated by the things I learn, and when those things take me down memory lane, reminding me of the rich treasure trove that was my mother’s mind, I feel blessed. My mother chafed under the fact that she possessed only a sixth-grade education.
My father had graduated from high school, and I think that my mother’s two brothers and two sisters had completed high school or at least managed to get a grade or two above her mere six grades. But she could read and write, and her memory was outstanding. She remained an avid reader and learner her whole life long.
I now chafe under the fact that I did not do all that was in my power to make my mother know just how much I appreciated her knowledge, her wisdom, her guidance, and her model for a moral life.
She could be testy, opinionated, provincial, and I know I disappointed her with some of my choices in life as I grew through my teen years and early adulthood. But I loved her more than I could even realize during my troubled teens and equally troubled early adulthood.
My mother left this earth on September 5, 1981, after having turned 58 years of age on her last birthday, June 27, 1981. Dying at such a young age always mystifies and saddens the living.
She seemed so vibrant and full of health, but it is likely that her suffering in childhood the illness of rheumatic fever weakened her heart. She was no hypochondriac, and she seldom visited doctors.
She studied nutrition and tried to improve her diet over the years. But she continued to smoke cigarettes, which likely contributed to her early passing. I am grateful for my mother’s love and the affection that she showed me as I grappled my way to adulthood. My love and appreciation for her has grown exponentially over the years.
But I do wish I had told her more often and more convincingly just how much she meant to me. My guru Paramahansa Yogananda said of his mother, whom he lost at the tender age of eleven,
I loved Mother as my dearest friend on earth. Her solacing black eyes had been my refuge in the trifling tragedies of childhood. ——Autobiography of a Yogi
I can say the same about my love for my mother.
While I loved my father, my sister, uncles, aunts, cousins, and other relatives with all my heart, love for my mother has always been and will always remain a special presence in my heart and mind.
She continues to call to me from her home in the astral level of being. I know she knows how I feel, how I miss her, and I long to be able to hold her in my arms and tell her just how much she has always meant to me.
All Things Spiritual
My spiritual arms embrace her always, my mystical mind communicates with her, and her soul power enlivens my thoughts as she continues to shed her special light in the Great Beyond.
My mother maintained a level of faith in all things spiritual that only one who had experienced the profound event of seeing her own beloved father after his death could afford. She knew that the soul did not “die.” She knew it because of that visitation from her father, whom she loved as her “dearest friend on earth.”
My gratitude to my mother has grown deeper over the years, as I have realized that her describing that experience of having seen her father after he died is likely responsible for my ability to understand and accept the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda.
Without that early, tangible hint that life does not end at death, the concepts of reincarnation and karma would likely have been more than a “highly educated” college graduate could accept. The blight of agnosticism and atheism inflicted by a college education on so many unsuspecting minds remains a sad, destructive force in modern life.
If losing one’s faith in a spiritual level of being has to result from becoming “highly educated,” I would choose to stay at the sixth grade level where my mother’s formal education ended and instead remain steeped in the faith that there is more to life than books and professors have to offer, or as Hamlet put it to Horatio:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. —-Hamlet, 1.5.167-8).
Without the concept of reincarnation and karma, very little in life on this mud ball of a planet makes sense. Accepting the notion—”Life is not fair”—is the sad result of a lazy mind; for if one continues to question, “Why is life not fair?,” keeping an open mind, eventually answers will come. And often they are likely to come in the concepts ofreincarnation and karma.
And although, I never got the chance to fully explore and examine those concepts with my mother, I have faith that she intuitively understood them without the intellectual fever such a discussion could entail.
She needed no philosophical discourse to convince her that the “afterlife” exists, because she knew that the soul was an everliving entity. On the day that he appeared before her, my mother’s father taught her that souls do not die.
My Poems and My Mother
My mother continues to provide me with material for poems, so any tribute to Mommy would remain incomplete without offering her a sampling of my poems, celebrating my affection and appreciation for her love and guidance.
Mommy, I love you, I miss the physical reality of you, but I feel your spiritual presence as my mystical mind opens itself to the astral home in which you continue your existence.
Accept this tribute that I am offering for the purpose of sharing with you my thoughts, prayers, and abiding love that I will always harbor in my core being for you, a beautiful soul.
Dust of a Baptist
In Memoriam: Helen Richardson June 27, 1923 – September 5, 1981
You let loose on this world a maudlin tongue And wore like a veil your woe and worries. Died of a broken heart at the edge of autumn, You are tucked away with the old fathers and mothers. You grieved like a child walking in a melancholy fog. Kept your dead alive in the wrinkles of your heart. Pain gathered you in his arms and sorrow became your passion. You hollowed out of life your space to mourn.
But I have felt your prayers and lived their answers. You spent your heart to save me from my miseries. If you could have, you would have spared me The evil that goaded me into marrying a devil.
The road through this life covers us with dust But the clear soul moves us to drink at the spring of living water.
Southern Woman
In Memoriam: Helen Richardson June 27, 1923 – September 5, 1981
Through astral reverie, I visit your essence, Lingering alongside that of your beloved father— The grandfather who escaped this earth prison Before I was sentenced to its concrete and bars.
You are the same small brown woman with blackHair and eyes of fire that flash, imparting to meYou intuit I am near, perceiving you both—my firstLook at the Greek grandfather I never met.
Our Greekness on this planet has ledUs back to a logical legendary ancestor—A strong Spartacus whose love of freedom spreadEven as he perished like Christ on a cross.
But you are a pure American South womanAnd if any Kentucky woman deserves the titleOf steel magnolia, it is you, who through a frailBody still attests the strength of a Sandow.
Your ethereal mind reminds me of the dayWe saw those two turtles come into the yard.Standing over them, we marveled, and I will neverForget what you said: “If we had shells like that,
We would be protected from the dangers of this world.”And I felt that I was in the presence of a wise master.It was only later that I realized the full impactOf what seemed a simple yet deep message—
We need a protective shell even more to shield The heart than the head, for it is through the emotions That we inflict enormous damage on our souls. I am Blessed and grateful to inform you I finally understand.
Gary Clark’s “Mary’s Prayer”: A Yogic Interpretation
Employing the Christian iconic mother figure, the song “Mary’s Prayer” offers a marvelous corroboration of concepts between Christianity, taught by Jesus the Christ and Yoga, taught by Bhagavan Krishna.
Introduction and Excerpt from “Mary’s Prayer”
The song “Mary’s Prayer” is from the album Meet Danny Wilson by the 1980s Scottish rock band Danny Wilson. Lead singer of the group and the writer of the song is Gary Clark. About the song, Gary Clark, the songwriter, has explained,
There is a lot of religious imagery in the song but that is really just a device to relate past, present, and future. It is basically just a simple love song. In fact I like to think of it as being like a country and western song.
A Yogic Interpretation
By quipping that his song “is basically just a simple love song,” Gary Clark is being overly modest; on the other hand, he could possibly have meant the tune to be a “simple love song,” but its use of imagery opens the possibility of a deeper interpretation than one traditionally associated with a “simple love song.” Thus, I offer my interpretation of Clark’s song, based on my primary method of poetry interpretation, which I label “Yogic Interpretation.”
This yogic interpretation of Gary Clark’s “Mary’s Prayer” reveals the spiritual nature of the song. The allusion to the Christian icon “Mary” alerts the reader to the significance of the song as it transcends the stature of a love song to a human lover, although it can certainly be interpreted to include that possibility. The chorus of the tune offers a lengthening chant, which uplifts the mind directing it toward the Divine Goal of spiritual union.
The narrator/singer of the song “Mary’s Prayer” is revealing his desire to return to his path to Soul-Awareness, which he has lost by a mistaken act that turned his attention to the worldly thoughts and activities that replaced his earlier attention to his spiritual realm.
The noun phrase, “Mary’s Prayer,” functions as a metaphor for Soul-Awareness, (God-Union, Self-Realization, Salvation are other terms for this consciousness). That metaphor is extended by the allusions, “heavenly,” “save me,” “blessed,” “Hail Marys,” and “light in my eyes.” All of these allusions possess religious connotations often associated with Christianity.
The great spiritual leader, Paramahansa Yogananda, has elucidated the comparisons between original Christianity as taught by Jesus Christ and original Yoga as taught by Bhagavan Krishna.
Danny Wilson – “Mary’s Prayer”
Mary’s Prayer
Verse 1
Everything is wonderful Being here is heavenly Every single day she says Everything is free
Verse 2
I used to be so careless As if I couldn’t care less Did I have to make mistakes When I was Mary’s prayer?
Verse 3
Suddenly the heavens roared Suddenly the rain came down Suddenly was washed away The Mary that I knew
Verse 4
So when you find somebody to keep Think of me and celebrate I made such a big mistake When I was Mary’s Prayer
Chorus
So if I say save me, save me Be the light in my eyes And if I say ten Hail Marys Leave a light on heaven for me
Verse 5
Blessed is the one who shares Your power and your beauty, Mary Blessed is the millionaire Who shares your wedding day
Verse 6
So when you find somebody to keep Think of me and celebrate I made such a big mistake When I was Mary’s Prayer
Chorus
So if I say save me, save me Be the light in my eyes And if I say ten Hail Marys Leave a light on heaven for me
Save me, save me Be the light in my eyes And if I say ten Hail Marys Leave a light on heaven for me
Verse 7
If you want the fruit to fall You have to give the tree a shake But if you shake the tree too hard, The bough is gonna break
Verse 8
And if I can’t reach the top of the tree Mary you can blow me up there What I wouldn’t give to be When I was Mary’s prayer
Chorus
So if I say save me, me save me Be the light in my eyes And if I say ten Hail Marys Leave a light on heaven for me
Save me, save me Be the light in my eyes And if I say ten Hail Marys Leave a light on heaven for me
Save me, save me Be the light in my eyes
What I wouldn’t give to be When I was Mary’s prayer
What I wouldn’t give to be When I was Mary’s prayer
What I wouldn’t—save me—give to be When I was Mary’s prayer
Commentary on “Mary’s Prayer”
A yogic interpretation of Gary Clark’s “Mary’s Prayer” reveals the song’s spiritual nature. The allusion to the Christian icon “Mary” alerts the reader to the spiritual significance of the song causing it to transcend the stature of a love song to a human lover.
First Verse: Declaring a Spiritual Truth
Everything is wonderful Being here is heavenly Every single day, she says Everything is free
The narrator/singer begins by declaring a spiritual truth, “Everything is wonderful,” and that being alive to experience this wonderfulness is “heavenly.” The following lines report that each day provides a blank slate of freedom upon which each child of the Belovèd Creator may write his/her own life experiences.
“She” refers to Mary, who has authority to make such judgments, as the narrator states. The historical and biblical Mary, as the mother of one of the Blessèd Creator’s most important avatars, Jesus the Christ, holds special power to know the will of the Divine Creator and dispense wisdom to all children of that Creator.
Therefore, the prayer of Mary is dedicated to each child of the Heavenly Creator, and her only prayer can be for the highest good of the soul, and the highest good is that each offspring of the Belovèd Lord ultimately know him/herself as such.
Thus, Mary sends the faithful “every single day” and “everything is free.” Every creature, every human being, every creation of the Divine Creator’s is given for the nurturance, guidance, and progress of each soul made in the Creator’s image.
Second Verse: The Care and Feeding of the Soul
I used to be so careless As if I couldn’t care less Did I have to make mistakes? When I was Mary’s prayer
In the second verse, the narrator, having established his knowledge of the stature and desire of Mary, contrasts his own status. He was not been dedicated to his own salvation; he hardly paid any attention to the care and feeding of his soul. It’s as if he could not have “cared less” about the most important aspect of his being.
But that is the past, and the narrator now realizes that he made mistakes that have led him in the wrong direction, and he now wonders if he really had to make such a mess of his life. After all, he was “Mary’s prayer” — the Blessèd Mother had offered him the blessing of soul-union, but through his mistakes he had spurned that offering.
Third Verse: Losing Sight of the Blessèd Mother
Suddenly the heavens roared Suddenly the rain came down Suddenly was washed away The Mary that I knew So when you find somebody who gives Think of me and celebrate I made such a big mistake When I was Mary’s Prayer
The narrator then reveals that through some great and fearful event that caused the heavens to move and rain to pour down, his life had become devoid of the love and caring that had been bestowed on him by Mary. He no longer knew how to pray or how to feel the grace and guidance of the Blessèd Mother.
Fourth Verse: Missing a Great Opportunity
So when you find somebody to keep Think of me and celebrate I made such a big mistake When I was Mary’s Prayer
The singing narrator then offers his testimony that having a soul guide, who gives as the blessèd Mary gives, must be kept and celebrated and not merely cast off as the narrator had done. He confesses again that he “made such a big mistake” at a time that he could have just grasped the heavenly protection, while he was “Mary’s prayer.”
Chorus: Introduction of the Chant in Four Lines
So if I say save me save me Be the light in my eyes And if I say ten Hail Marys Leave a light on heaven for me
Turning to prayer can be difficult for the one who has deliberately left it behind and perhaps forgotten its efficacy. But the narrator is once again taking up his prayers. He is now calling out to the Blessèd One, even though he frames his supplication in “if” clauses: he cries, “So if I say save me, save me / Be the light in my eyes.” He demands from the Divine Mother that she return to him as the light of his eyes, which had left him.
Furthermore, and again framing his supplication in an “if” clause, he cries, “And if I say ten Hail Marys,” but yet again demands that she “Leave a light on in heaven for me.” The “if” clause followed by a demand seems contradictory, but the narrator is in distress and is confounded by his failures and his former indifference. The chorus of this song functions as a chant as it grows from four lines to its final iteration of sixteen lines that complete the song.
Fifth Verse: Rich in Spirit
Blessed is the one who shares The power and your beauty, Mary Blessed is the millionaire Who shares your wedding day
Still in supplication to the Divine Blessèd Mother, the narrator now simply voices what he knows to be the influence of the Divine One: anyone who accepts and transforms his life according to “the power and the beauty” of Mary will find him “a millionaire.” Not necessarily financially rich—but much more important, rich in spirit. The great wedding of the little soul to the Oversoul will be the richest blessing of all.
Sixth Verse: Emphasizing the Need to Celebrate and Remember
So when you find somebody to give Think of me and celebrate I made such a big mistake When I was Mary’s Prayer
The sixth verse is a repetition of the fourth. It functions to reiterate the importance of the narrator’s awareness of the need to celebrate those giving beings as well as the vital necessity that he realizes what a “big mistake” he made “when [he] was Mary’s Prayer.”
Chorus: Continuing the Chant with Repetition
So if I say save me, save me Be the light in my eyes And if I say ten Hail Marys Leave a light on heaven for me
Save me, save me Be the light in my eyes And if I say ten Hail Marys Leave a light on heaven for men
The chorus again becoming an enlarging presence serves to direct the mind Heaven-ward, while reminding the singer of his purpose for singing, for addressing his Divine Belovèd and keeping the mind steady.
Seventh Verse: Gathering the Effects of Yoga
If you want the fruit to fall You have to give the tree a shake But if you shake the tree too hard, The bough is gonna break
The penultimate verse offers a metaphor of gathering fruit from a tree which likens such gathering to the yoga practice that leads to Self-Realization or God-union. Shaking the tree gently will result in fruit falling, but shaking “the tree too hard” will break the bough. Yoga techniques must be practiced gently; straining in yoga practice is like shaking the tree too hard, which will result in failure to attain the yogic goals.
Eighth Verse: Upward Movement Through Faith
And if I can’t reach the top of the tree Mary you can blow me up there What I wouldn’t give to be When I was Mary’s prayer
The final verse also employs a tree metaphor. The narrator, who is once again firmly on his spiritual path, expresses an extremely important truth that each devotee must cultivate: faith that the target of his goal can lift the devotee at any time.
The narrator colorfully expresses this truth by stating, “And if I can’t reach the top of the tree / Mary you can blow me up there.” And finally, he expresses his regret for allowing Mary to escape him: he wants to become “Mary’s prayer” once again, and he would give anything to do so.
Chorus: The Efficacy of the Chant
So if I say save me, me save me Be the light in my eyes And if I say ten Hail Marys Leave a light on heaven for me
Save me, save me Be the light in my eyes And if I say ten Hail Marys Leave a light on heaven for me
Save me, save me Be the light in my eyes What I wouldn’t give to be When I was Mary’s prayer
What I wouldn’t give to be When I was Mary’s prayer What I wouldn’t—save me—give to be When I was Mary’s prayer
The chorus doubled from its first iteration of four lines featured after the fourth verse to eight lines following verse six. Then it doubles again following the final verse, finishing with sixteen lines.
The marvelous effect of the chant places the song squarely within the yogic practice of employing repetition to steady and direct the mind to its goal of union with the Divine. The song finishes with the much enlarged chorus, which is not only musically pleasing, but also shares the efficacy of a chant that draws the mind closer to its spiritual, yogic goal.
Cornelius Eady’s “Renée Nicole Good Is Murdered” attempts an elegy motivated by political propaganda instead of poetic insight. With clumsy imagery such as “melted from / The ice pack” and melodramatic effusions such as “see what fucking / With the bull gets you,” the piece descends into propaganda which fails to speak to the gravity of the event to which it refers.
Introduction and Text of “Renée Nicole Good Is Murdered”
Cornelius Eady is a fairly well-known American poet, whose work often exploits race and identity but also often focuses on music. Because the field of po-biz in its postmodern garb currently awards talentless and bombastic versifiers, who engage little more than identify politics, Eady can boast of having received Lamont and National Book Award nominations.
However, Eady’s 2026 piece “Renée Nicole Good Is Murdered” falls flat because it focuses on political propaganda; it shows no characteristic of an authentic elegy and no formal poetic craft.
Renée Nicole Good was a recent citizen of Minnesota, who, on January 7, 2026, was impeding the work of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as they engaged in their task of locating and arresting illegal migrants for deportation, many of whom had criminal records for murder, rape, and armed robbery.
As Good attempted to ram her Honda Pilot into an ICE agent, the agent shot and killed her. The event has sparked national attention, with political activists exploiting the sorrowful event to score political points. Democrats governor Tim Walz and mayor Jacob Frey have continued to gin up further violence, encouraging their citizens to continue to impede the ICE agents as those federal agents simply attempt to do their job.
An Elegy Goes Astray
It should be obvious that the subject to this “elegy” does not comport with the definition of a that form; the death of Renée Nicole Good is not a tragedy in the traditional, literary definition, but it is sorrowful event that we all mourn and wish desperately had not happened.
Good’s character flaw lay only in her failure to understand and/or accept the truth of the political turmoil that currently grips the nation, especially Trump Derangement Syndrome, a condition that dictates that anything happening under the Trump administration is evil and must fought against by any means necessary–including attempting to run down an ICS agent with two ton vehicle.
While Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem’s labeling Good a “domestic terrorist” has received pushback, it does seem that the definition of that phrase clearly speaks to what Renée Good was doing that day:
Domestic terrorism in the United States is defined by federal statute in 18 U.S.C. § 2331(5), which states that it means activities that meet three criteria: (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that violate U.S. or state criminal laws; (B) appear intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence government policy by intimidation or coercion, or affect government conduct by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within U.S. territorial jurisdiction. [my emphasis added: describing Good’s activism and actions]
Serious Matter Captured by Propaganda
The death of any individual causes concern and sorrow, especially when violence is involved, and the death of Renée Good is horrifying and remains particularly sad because she died because of the misguided urgings she believed from her fellow travelers—including the governor of her state and the mayor of her city.
Now comes the verse maker Cornelius Eady adding more dreck to the filth that has already been spewed about this horrific event. And this time the discourse is masquerading as an elegy—an elegy for an unfortunate, misguided woman whose action has been labeled domestic terrorism!
The subject matter is grave, but Eady’s treatment of it as a elegiac poem makes a mockery not only the human subject but the art of poetic elegy itself. The piece collapses into political sloganeering along with a clunky metaphor that undermines both elegiac seriousness and poetic craft.
Instead of focusing on complex human experience, the versifier substitutes caricatures for genuine people and emotion, such as a “dormant virus” and the “super cops”; these phrases ring in as contrived mountebanks rather than genuine images.
Instead of engaging with any nuanced reality of Good’s actual life and violent death, the piece’s political propaganda sorely diminishes the ability to even grieve, and it has no chance to illuminate.
The piece conflates contrived imagery of viral ice-packs with law enforcement as it inserts overt hostility (“see what fucking / With the bull gets you”). Eady’s obscene, flabby phrasing sacrifices reality for blunt political postering, yielding a piece of discourse that sadly falls flat as an elegy.
Renée Nicole Good Is Murdered
Up rides the super cops, The cancellation squad. A dormant virus, melted from The ice pack, And the conversation Is end-stopped when The shell cracks her Car window, does its Dumb duty, Brings silence To a poet’s mind.
The President says: You’re a terror bot If you don’t comply. Homeland security Puts on a ten gallon Texas size hat, Says see what fucking With the bull gets you. There is a picture of her Just before it tips rancid, Just before she’s dragged Into how they see her.
I wish I could read the words As they blaze their last, unsuspected Race through her skull. A language poem that ends on The word Impossible.
Commentary on “Renée Nicole Good Is Murdered”
The piece’s political sloganeering and awkward images undermine the gravity and craft of elegy, and diminish the gravity of the event it intends to mourn.
First Movement: “Up rides the super cops”
Up rides the super cops, The cancellation squad. A dormant virus, melted from The ice pack, And the conversation Is end-stopped when The shell cracks her Car window, does its Dumb duty, Brings silence To a poet’s mind.
When a piece offered as a poem begins with a bald-face lie in its title, what can one expect from the rest of the piece? The fact is that Renée Nicole Good was not “murdered.” She was killed by an ICE agent, acting in self-defense, as she appears to ram the agent with her two ton vehicle, a Honda Pilot.
The opening stanza attempts to set a dramatic scene with bold imagery: “Up rides the super cops” and “The cancellation squad.” The labeling of ICE agents as “super cops” is talky and unserious, and calling them the “cancellation squad” is equal as vapid. What’s with the grammatical error using a singular verb with a plural subject? That one might be overlooked and laid to an attempt at conversational dialect.
Quite the reverse is true about the “cancellation” notation; instead of canceling anything, ICE’s work entails removing crime and restoring the social order that works well for its citizens. The cartoonish labeling reveals more about the ignorance of real news, immaturity, and disingenuousness of the would-be poet than it does about the target of his ire.
The next line—“A dormant virus, melted from / The ice pack”—is even more asinine. There is no connection between a virus and the Minneapolis shooting of Good. The phrase hangs out like a concocted political conflation, intending to bring to mind the pandemic era as it critiques law enforcement actions as disease-like. Such a metaphor reduces real individuals to abstract threats and hazards.
Poetic metaphor and image require calibration: a powerful metaphor/image resonates with emotional truth. Here, the metaphors as well as the images feel arbitrary and jarring, unanchored to experience or sensation. It, therefore, becomes political propaganda rather than poetic reflection.
The speaker of the piece is undermining his thoughts by marginalizing them with clumsy syntax and incoherent imagery. Lines such as “The shell cracks her / Car window” attempt to point to violence but lack clarity or context, leaving the reader unsure whether the “shell” is literal or figurative.
These surreal pivots never come together to reveal any recognizable emotional reaction or narrative flavor. Abrupt shifts, awkward line breaks, and absurd references place the verse into the doggerel category rather than with crafted poetry.
Instead of exploring grief or loss, the imagery functions to flatten any complexity of thought in favor of bald assertion. As a result, the piece establishes a tone that bespeaks propaganda instead of elegy.
Second Movement: “The President says”
The President says: You’re a terror bot If you don’t comply. Homeland security Puts on a ten gallon Texas size hat, Says see what fucking With the bull gets you. There is a picture of her Just before it tips rancid, Just before she’s dragged Into how they see her.
The second movement intensifies these absurdities already presented in the first movement; it shifts into over-drive as is becomes pure political caricature. The claim about what the “President says” reads as hyperbolic ventriloquism rather than credible critique of actual quotation.
Effective elegy builds a sympathetic connection between public tragedy and private humanity, but this piece merely reduces the subject’s death to a cartoonish struggle between an imaginary oppressive state and a pathetically symbolic victim.
The reference to “Homeland security” donning a “ten gallon / Texas size hat” reduces would-be satire to stereotype, substituting fake bravado for engagement with real political language. DHS secretary Kristi Noem often dons Western style outfits, quite appropriately as the former governor of South Dakota.
Profanity-laden lines aim for shock but dislocate the tone of a piece intended to elegize its subject. This tonal imbalance further distances the piece from the contours of elegy. Even gestures toward tenderness—“There is a picture of her / Just before it tips rancid”—feel tacked on and tacky as they are aiming at rhetorical bluster.
Third Movement: “I wish I could read the words”
I wish I could read the words As they blaze their last, unsuspected Race through her skull. A language poem that ends on The word Impossible.
The final movement tries to offer some introspection by the speaker, but his attempt lapses into melodrama. Imagining words “blazing” as they “race through her skull” aestheticizes the violent act rather than honoring the dead.
The closing epigram—ending on the word “Impossible”—feels unconvincing because it sounds so completely contrived, lacking the emotional grounding so necessary for resonance.
Through its three movements, the piece substitutes forced metaphor/image, political sloganeering, and abstraction for specificity, empathy, genuine emotion, and reality itself.
Because of all of those weaknesses, the piece fails to meet the demands of a true elegy, instead it collapses into rhetorically heavy, emotionally shallow doggerel that neither illuminates the horrific event, nor does it pay tribute and honor its subject.
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