Death has been and always will be an interesting and compelling topic among poets and authors alike. Death sheds a mysterious vale over life and is often avoided or dreaded within people causing diversity among the reactions of modern poetry and thought. Mortality can be treated as a crisis, a destination, with significance or without, as well as (sadly) by some as a goal. Death provides a wide spectrum of ideas that can be expanded upon with dignity or as a magnanimous ideal. The poets that I have read and pondered deliver an array of insight on the topic; from its grotesqueness to its humbleness. They approach or meditate upon death with disgust as well as with nonchalance. Overall I think that although the poets each dissect and interpret our inevitable encounter in variation they all would agree in its mystery and finality.
             To live, especially with comfort and respect, can often be, and is usually, a difficult as well as unavoidable task. Dying can be viewed in much the same way. Although you sometimes have a choice, often death is sudden and miserable and can end a life with little or no grace. I think Randall Jarrell would agree with me on this point. In his poem "The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner" Jarrell explicates upon a situation that although is sometimes forced at a person, is often (especially within his time-period) viewed with high regard in the population. What would be a better way to die than defending one's nation and doing your part in freeing millions of oppressed people? But this "brave" act by a man who is terrified ends in what I would see as humiliation. His parents or friends would not view his death as disgraceful or anything but the way in which his remains were desecrated would have surely been disgusting. "When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose." The idea of somebody washing the flesh and guts of a recently deceased person portrays how pathetic the finality of one's li...