Modernism emerged as a reaction to a certain state of affairs that was occurring around the 19th and 20th century. These were far-reaching changes that revealed itself most pronounced in the arts. This essay analyzes Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Father Death Blues” is a playful poem with a bouncy rhyme scheme, which personifies death into familiar characters, and is characteristic and reflective of the modernist movement.
Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Father Death Blues” is a playful treatment of death in which death is personified under various guises. It addresses death with “Hey” and personifies it as a father, a poor man, an old daddy. To further emphasize the personhood of death, the world is capitalized throughout the poem and used seventeen times in the poem of nine three-line stanzas.
The speaker is giving advice to death throughout the poem: “Old Aunty Death, Don’t hide your bones, Old Uncle death I hear your groans.” (Ginsberg, 3). Unlike the other three poems analyzed, Ginsberg uses a varying rhyming pattern throughout.
His images of are of familiar characters of comfort in life. Parents, relatives, comforting religious symbols from Eastern religion, “Buddha DeathDharma DeathSangha Death.” (Gindsberg, 7).
Around the Modernist movement, religion was beginning to lose its hold and place in culture. One of the primary functions of religion is to give an explanation as to what happens when a person dies. Most religion, and especially Western Christian religion give someone this explantation. Everything suddently changes though, the worldview of death when there is a new definition of it.
Another poem, written around the same time of Ginsberg’s time also has a theme of death which shows a similar theme of how art was exploring the idea changes that the modernist movement caused.
Dylan Thomas’s poem “And Death Shall Have No Dominion” a speaker speaking about death, in the way that passages of the Bible feature the point of view of god and predicate his voice.
“And death shall have no dominion,” (Dylan, 1) the poem proclaims in the first line. The justification for taking death’s domain is that while death can remove certain individuals from the planet, those are just particulars, the universal things that are appreciated by individuals will always remain intact: “Though lovers be lost love shall not.”
The title of the poem, “And death shall have no dominion” is also a repeating line that appears at the beginning on end of all three of the poems stanzas. The content of the stanzas serves to make a point of why such is so.
The tone is a prophetic confidence. The speaker is detached, speaking as much to death or laws of the universe than to the reader listening to the pronouncements against death. This adds a high level of formality to the poem.
The poem is literal, in that at least the speaker believes his argument is sound and that death is trivial due to it’s inability to take out the cycle of life, only snuff out an individual life.
Thomas uses concrete language that establishes firm images throughout the poem. He employs a variety of imagery throughout his poem. One is bones, an images strongly associated with death. The speaker talks about bones being clicked cleaned and then disappearing entirely. He employs a lot of maritime imagery, which establishes death as a journey into unknown water: “Under the windings of the seaThey lying long shall not die windily;” (Thomas, 2).
Works Cited
"And Death Shall Have No Dominion by Dylan Thomas." PoemHunter.Com - Thousands of poems and poets. Poetry Search Engine. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2013. <http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/and-death-shall-have-no-dominion/>.
"Father Death Blues by Allen Ginsberg."PoemHunter.Com - Thousands of poems and poets. Poetry Search Engine. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2013. <http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/father-death-blues/>.
