Bring on the tough stuff - there’s not just one right answer.
- What's with the offbeat capitalization, dashes, and made up words? Her poems may be old (and weird) but this question never gets old. Maybe because it's impossible to answer definitively.
- Why the guy act? Why does the female poet adopt a masculine persona for this poem? How would these observations read differently if the speaker were identified as a woman?
- What effect does the inconsistent rhyme scheme have on our understanding and appreciation of the poem?
- What's the speaker's position on death? Accepting? Appalled? Saddened? Some combination of these or none of the above?
- How is the speaker involved in what he observed? Or is he?