Reginald Murray
Dr. Hall
English 132
Death Itself

The act of dying; the end of life the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism is the definition of death. I feel like poets devote their time and energy to this subject a lot because it is something that happens in reality that can effect a lot of people. You cannot hide from it because soon as your born you are already dying. They also talk about it because it is rarely talked about. People do not like to talk about death. We benefit the knowledge of it from reading the authors work. It seems scary but it is not. Maybe they had a real close experience with death to be so in depth and write about it. Reading a real creepy death poem at night can send chills down your spine. It could have come from the old days of people not knowing much about death to talk so much about it to eventually writing poems about death. Poetry enables any poet to meditate upon and emotionally and lyrically respond to death, whether the death of a stranger, a loved one, oneself, or just the fact of death itself. Death is a small word that is so powerful and has the ability to change some ones mood. Just the thought of it makes you think of something bad or somebody close to you that died.
In the first stanza of "To an Athlete Dying Young" the athlete is prized for winning their town the race. The town people seemed to love him a lot and thought of him as a hero kind of. He seemed to be back in the day to be carried through a market-place. Now it seems like the town’s people are carrying him in his casket throughout town. The town people sets the casket down for the funeral it seemed "And set you at your threshold down"(7). He says the athlete was smart to slip bedtimes away. That could mean he skipped out on death a time or two. Seem like a lucky guy to do that but like always death caught up with him.