Death Poetry

April 1, 2014
Grades 9-12 In this entry in the new Pure Poetry series, eight poems about death by English and American poets from a variety of periods (though none later than the early twentieth century) are paired with detailed explanations of each poem's meaning and context and an examination of its poetic devices. The detail of analysis varies, from verse-level attention to points as minute as capitalization and punctuation to wider historical context, such as the Enlightenment era or the Civil War. The poems are reproduced only once at the beginning of each chapter, which inconveniently requires frequent flipping back and forth between the poem and the explanation, and the long, solid blocks of text might prove daunting to less dedicated readers. That said, these eight examples will provide ample tools for students learning how to unpack poetry.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)