About this ebook
Pretty much every poet in every age has written about death and dying. Along with love, it might be the most popular subject in poetry. Yet, until now, no anthology has gathered the best and most famous of these verses in one place.
This collection ranges dramatically. With more than 320 poems, it goes across all of history, from the ancients straight through to today. Across countries and languages, across schools of poetry. You’ll find a plethora of approaches—witty, humorous, deadly serious, tear-jerking, wise, profound, angry, spiritual, atheistic, uncertain, highly personal, political, mythic, earthy, and only occasionally morbid.
Every angle you can think of is covered—the deaths of children, lost loves, funeral rites, close calls, eating meat, serial killers, the death penalty, roadkill, the Underworld, reincarnation, elegies for famous people, death as an equalizer, death as a junk man, death as a child, the death of God, the death of death . . . .
You’ll find death poetry’s greatest hits, including:
This collection ranges dramatically. With more than 320 poems, it goes across all of history, from the ancients straight through to today. Across countries and languages, across schools of poetry. You’ll find a plethora of approaches—witty, humorous, deadly serious, tear-jerking, wise, profound, angry, spiritual, atheistic, uncertain, highly personal, political, mythic, earthy, and only occasionally morbid.
Every angle you can think of is covered—the deaths of children, lost loves, funeral rites, close calls, eating meat, serial killers, the death penalty, roadkill, the Underworld, reincarnation, elegies for famous people, death as an equalizer, death as a junk man, death as a child, the death of God, the death of death . . . .
You’ll find death poetry’s greatest hits, including:
- “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson
- “To an Athlete Dying Young” by A.E. Housman
- “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas
- “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” by Walt Whitman
- “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe
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About the author
Russ Kick is an editor and writer. The New York Times referred to him as “an information archaeologist,” and Utne Reader named him one of its 50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World. Among his many popular books are Everything You Know Is Wrong, Death Poems, and 100 Things You Are Not Supposed to Know.
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