Literary Death

Death is inevitable for everything, all except for Isabel Houck's family and the moon. In this poem, the narrator describes a woman's tie to the moon and her grandparents. She tells of a scene where her grandfather shoots two deer with one bullet and one arm and a quick fall from the tree he's in. She also describes the first time she goes hunting with him.

There are so many layers of this poem that I respect. Houck's tone and style are very very different from mine, though I don't write poetry often, but her subtle metaphors and parallels are admirable. I wish I had the capability for brilliant brevity she does, because I tend to ramble on and construe exactly what she says in a page in a half that I'd maybe get down in ten pages.

I think her decision to write the entire poem in lower case was also a move displaying brilliant brevity: if this poem is full of dead things or things soon to die, then the flatness implied by the unexcited letters is appropriate. Plus, life moves so fast, why waste space with large letters when you can fit more small letters into one space?

Houck, Isabel. "Dead Things." Cargoes. 2016: 52-53. Print.

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