Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Dorianne Laux?s "Last Words" is a poignant meditation on grief, memory, and the cumulative weight of loss. The poem intricately weaves personal and universal experiences of death, tracing how each loss reverberates, not only marking the passing of loved ones but also shifting the speaker’s perception of life and its transient joys. Through richly layered imagery and deliberate pacing, Laux examines the fragility of existence and the enduring presence of absence.

The opening stanza introduces the voice of the dying man, described as "a soft coal breaking / open in the little stove of his heart." This metaphor evokes warmth, fragility, and an inevitable extinguishing, setting a tone of quiet reverence. The imagery suggests that even in his final moments, his presence radiates an intimate vitality, a light that dims but leaves a lasting impression. His death silences not only his voice but also the world around him: "the birds stopped singing." This immediate cessation underscores the profound disruption of loss, as though nature itself acknowledges his passing.

From this initial death, a cascade of other losses unfolds, "as if by permission." The phrase hints at the interconnectedness of grief, where one death seems to open the floodgates for others. The speaker recounts the loss of a "beloved teacher," a "cousin," and a lover who "slipped from my life / the way a rope slithers from your grip." The simile of the rope slipping away captures the helplessness and inevitability of these departures, emphasizing the speaker?s inability to hold on amidst the vast, consuming forces of time and change. The ocean metaphor intensifies the sense of loss, suggesting the depth and finality of separation, as well as the physical toll grief takes: "your fingers stripped of flesh."

Laux seamlessly transitions between the deeply personal and the symbolic. The "deck of cards worn smooth" and the "jack / of spades laid down at last" evoke the passage of time and the fragility of memory. Everyday objects—a worn deck, an ashtray filled with pebbles—become talismans of the past, imbued with the weight of moments lost and preserved. The ashtray?s pebbles, "gathered at day?s end from a beach your mind has never left," symbolize the speaker’s yearning for permanence in the face of ephemerality, as well as the tendency to return, in thought, to places associated with love and loss.

The poem’s midpoint shifts to an elegiac reflection on artists and poets who have also passed: "Levis, Matthews, Levertov." By naming these literary figures, Laux underscores the universal nature of loss, bridging the personal with the communal. The mention of poetry lost—books left on airport benches, a "box misplaced," a suitcase crushed—parallels the physical losses of loved ones, as though even objects tied to memory and art are subject to disappearance.

In one of the most arresting images, the speaker recounts taking a "rubbing / of the carved wings and lilies from a headstone," followed by the inscription: "The Best Blues Singer in the World / Will Never Stop Singing." This line crystallizes the tension between presence and absence, permanence and impermanence. While the singer is gone, their voice and spirit persist in memory and legacy, resonating beyond death. The gesture of preserving the inscription through a rubbing becomes an act of defiance against forgetting, a way of holding onto the intangible.

The final stanza asks a devastating question: "How many losses does it take to stop a heart, / to lay waste to the vocabularies of desire?" This rhetorical query encapsulates the poem’s central theme—the relentless accumulation of grief and its impact on the human spirit. Yet, even as the speaker describes a world filled with the echoes of loss, there is a recognition of resilience. The "last words" of the departed "flown up into the trees" suggest that while life and language may falter, something ethereal—memories, legacies, the essence of those lost—remains aloft, woven into the fabric of the natural world.

"Last Words" is an exquisite exploration of how grief reshapes the self, intertwining the personal with the universal. Laux’s use of vivid imagery, juxtaposition, and a deliberate, reflective tone invites readers to confront the inevitability of loss while finding solace in the enduring connections to those who are gone. It is a poem that captures the paradox of mourning: the emptiness left behind and the persistent, almost sacred presence of the departed in the mind and heart.

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