Poetry Critique

The Dead
by Susan Mitchell

At night the dead come down to the river to drink.
They unburden themselves of their fears,
their worries for us. They take out the old photographs.
They pat the lines in our hands and tell our futures,
which are cracked and yellow.
Some dead find their way to our houses.
They go up to the attics.
They read the letters they sent us, insatiable
for signs of their love.
They tell each other stories.
They make so much noise
they wake us
as they did when we were children and they stayed up
drinking all night in the kitchen.

2. When I read a poem, if I can't begin to see meaning in it by the end, I USUALLY don't like. I fear that that makes me sound as if I'm afraid to try to look deeper, but I hope it doesn't. It's not that I can't find meaning in things, it's just that i prefer to enjoy poetry more than work at it. With this poem, definitely thought I had a solid meaning for it, until the last three lines. After reading it a few more times and thinking it over, I think I have it... sort of. In this poem, I enjoy the emotion that the dead have: the longing and wondering sense of depressed nostalgia.

3. I don't like the title. The poem talks about a sort of life in death, or ghosts. "The Dead" sounds so resolute and so definite, that I don't think it fits the meaning of the poem. The dead in the poem live on in the people that remember them, but the title feels like it's almost a slap in the face to anyone that takes the time to reminisce about their passed loved ones, saying 'they're dead, stop thinking about them!'

4. One thing that Mitchell does is use "they" many times to refer to the dead. Everything that the dead do is together. This could mean a couple of things. It could mean that in death, the dead happy to have company to share memories eternally with. It could also mean, in the more stereotypical sense, that the dead wonder the Earth in packs, sad, lonely, and almost haunting. These are two ways to look at only the use of "they," but once one takes the entire poem into consideration, it is clear that the first viewpoint is correct. The only other poetic device that I can find isn't that great. It's to say that Mitchell uses personification with the dead giving them alive-like life. I'm not sure if this passes though, because the dead are humans, they just aren't alive.

5. The tone of the poem is content. It isn't happy, but it isn't unhappy either. We instinctively associate sadness with death, but this poem gives the feeling that the dead enjoy their lifelessness by remembering life. The reader get's this feeling because Mitchell is describing the dead doing joyous activities such as sharing memories and photographs and drinking all night long. The tone doesn't get past content because the dead are still dead.