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, tearjerking, 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 The rest of the band includes . . . Jane Austen, Mary Jo Bang, Willis Barnstone, Charles Baudelaire, William Blake, Charlotte Brontë, Lord Byron, Lucille Clifton, Andrei Codrescu, Wanda Coleman, Billy Collins, Ralph Waldo Emerson, T.S. Eliot, Nick Flynn, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Frost, Kimiko Hahn, Homer, Victor Hugo, Langston Hughes, James Joyce, C.S. Lewis, Amy Lowell, W.S. Merwin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Pablo Neruda, Thich Nhat Hanh, Friedrich Nietzsche, Wilfred Owen, Rainer Maria Rilke, Christina Rossetti, Rumi, Sappho, Shakespeare, Wallace Stevens, Ruth Stone, Wislawa Szymborska, W.B. Yeats, and a few hundred more. "Russ Kick is best known for his "disinformation" guides that expose myths and lies by unearthing subversive facts and countercultural knowledge. His books include 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know and You Are Being Lied To --volumes that challenge the reader to question assumptions. What he asks us to acknowledge with The Graphic Canon is this: Gulliver's Travels, Wuthering Heights, Leaves of Grass--these works of literature do not reside just on the shelves of academia; they flourish in the eye of our imagination." -- New York Times review of The Graphic Cannon edited by Russ Kick ― Reviews Russ Kick is the editor of the wildly successful three-volume anthology The Graphic Canon: The World's Great Literature as Comics and Visuals and the bestselling anthologies You Are Being Lied To, Everything You Know is Wrong, and 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know . His books have sold over half a million copies. The New York Times has dubbed him "an information archaeologist," Details magazine described him as "a Renaissance man," and Utne Reader named him one of its "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World." He is creator of the popular website www.thememoryhole.com. death poems Classic, Contemporary, Witty, Serious, Tear-Jerking, Wise, Profound, Angry, Funny, Spiritual, Atheistic, Uncertain, Personal, Political, Mythic, Earthy, and Only Occasionally Morbid By Russ Kick Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC Copyright © 2013 Russ Kick All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-938875-04-5 Contents IntroductionThe Nature of DeathSeeing DeathThose Who Have Gone (and the Ones Still Here)LoveThe Four-Legged and the WingedViolenceFacing One's DemiseThe CrossingRemains and RitualsWhat Comes NextCarpe DiemOssuary CHAPTER 1 the nature of death In which the poets reflect on what death is, meditate on why it happens, and pontificate onwhat it means to us      From "Song of Myself"     WALT WHITMAN     I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men     and women, And the hints about old men and mothers, and the     offspring taken soon out of their laps.     What do you think has become of the young and old men?     And what do you think has become of the women and children?     They are alive and well somewhere,     The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,     And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end     to arrest it,     And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.     All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,     And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.     * * *      Death the Leveller     JAMES SHIRLEY     The glories of our blood and state     Are shadows, not substantial things;     There is no armour against fate;     Death lays his icy hand on kings:     Sceptre and Crown     Must tumble down,     And in the dust be equal made     With the poor crookèd scythe and spade.     Some men with swords may reap the field,     And plant fresh laurels where they kill:     But their strong nerves at last must yield;     They tame but