Jazzy Poetry (PR)

As someone who was never super interested in poetry, it was very hard to try and find a poem to analyze that I would like. Luckily however, I found this very interesting and somewhat musical poem while searching. The poem is called "Funeral Blues" by W.H. Auden.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. 

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message “He is Dead”.

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. 

He was my North, my South, my East and West, 

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. 

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, 

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good. 

The first thing that grabbed by attention when reading this poem was the flow. I normally read poems as they are with a slight beat in mind. However, when I was reading this, it felt like it was almost a song. It has a weird vibe to it that made me think of a dark song or even a poetry session at a coffee shop, with a bongo playing with some smooth jazz.

The vibe aside, the poem is also wonderfully written. As many of you can tell from the first stanza, this is not a happy poem. However, what I really like about it is all of the depression and anger. Rather than read it as someone who is solely in mourning for a guy but rather with someone who is just angry at the world. I personally like the final stanza, where you can almost feel the anger from the woman and hear her yelling at you to give up all hope. She is clearly angry and believes that there is no happiness left in the world, as many people do after the death of a loved one. The imagery ignited in this poem is also nice and fits the mood. I can almost see the planes circling overhead and the policemen wearing  black gloves as a way of mourning.

Overall, this poem is very interesting and it incites some great emotions. While I am still not super excited for poetry, I do enjoy when I find very unique poems that just sound and feel amazing and this one is no exception. I highly recommend that you "poetry buffs" take a hard look at this poem because of all the emotion it pours out and the nice, jazzy feeling you get when you read it.