Thursday, April 5, 2012

Death and Ordinary


The poem that struck me the most by Wallace was The Death of a Soldier.  What struck me was the first line “Life contracts and death is expected”.  After I read it, it instantly reminded me of the first class we had when we were asked to free write about “the ordinary”.  Dr. Case and someone else both wrote about death, which I remember thinking was rather unusual.  But then as we discussed it as a class we decided that death was the inevitable and that it seems so ordinary until a loved one close to us dies.  Then it seems to become a tragedy and whirlwind of emotions.  The word that Wallace used that brought all of this to mind for me was ‘expected’.  
I really enjoyed Wallace’s work and like reading philosophical poetry.  It is interesting to me that philosophy can be expressed either in poetry or in essay or book style.  For me I believe that my mind wandered through Wallace’s work more freely than that of the other philosophers we have read.  That is because I believe that poetry is a form or writing that is always open for interpretation.  To me it seems much lighter and easier for my mind to wander to the places the author is taking me opposed to Emerson or Heidegger.  With Emerson and Heidegger, there is often a lot of other thoughts and wording that, as readers, we get caught up with or confused by.  

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