When Death Comes

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1991

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“When Death Comes” is an open-form lyric, emphasizing the emotions of the speaker as they confront death and contemplate life. The poem does not employ specific rhyme or meter and does not have stanzas of equal length. However, the poem does have an organizing principle. Lines 1-10 are about the future arrival of death and what form that arrival will take. Lines 11-20 center upon how the world should be valued with this knowledge of ultimate cessation at forefront of the mind. The images highlight empathy, as well as individual and collective preciousness. In closing, Lines 21-28 return to the subject of the speaker’s own death, emphasizing what the speaker wants for themselves “when it’s over” (Lines 21, 24). These lines contemplate the speaker’s legacy and harken back to the first section of the poem, particularly the fourth stanza. The abstract concept of eternity is made concrete by defined natural imagery; a technique commonly used by Oliver throughout her oeuvre.

Line Breaks and Punctuation

Interviewer Krista Tippett asked Oliver about her poem “Wild Geese” during an interview for the On Being Project, and Oliver noted it began as an exercise about line breaks, whether to use an end-stop, a defined end, or enjambment (the term for when a thought continues to the next line). Oliver told Tippett that with an end-stop, “you’ve said something definite. It’s very different from enjambment, and I love all that difference. And that’s what I was doing” (“Mary Oliver: ‘I Got Saved By the Beauty of the World.’” On Being with Krista Tippett from The On Being Project, 2015). In “When Death Comes,” the use of enjambment and end-stops are also significant. The use of the semi-colon in the first stanzas adds to the finality of death’s actions. However, Oliver significantly changes the punctuation to a colon in Line 9 to heighten our attention to what’s inhabiting the “cottage of darkness” (Line 10) and its mystery. When the speaker considers life after this encounter, Oliver shifts her technique and her lines become heavily enjambed in a sort of breathless rush to clarify everything she loves about the world. There is no end-stop from Line 11 until Line 20—all the lines are enjambed. In the last third of the poem Oliver uses a mix between end-stopped and enjambed lines, suggesting perhaps that the finality of death is mitigated by the embrace of life. This is particularly prevalent in the last two stanzas:

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world (Lines 24-28).

Here the important emotional words “wonder” (Line 24) and “frightened” (Line 27) are enjambed into the next line, but the end-stops emphasize the words “real” (Line 25) and “world” (Line 28). This heightens the key emotional content of the poem that awe and fear coexist in the here and now.

First-Person Narration

“When Death Comes” is written in the first person. Initially, this might make it seem that the poem is from Oliver’s personal point of view and that she is the speaker. However, as Oliver told Tippett, first-person does not necessarily indicate the self as the only subject of her work. Oliver noted about other poems that employ first person that she “wanted the ‘I’ to be the possible reader, rather than about myself. It was about an experience that happened to be mine but could well have been anybody else’s” (“Mary Oliver,” On Being). While this stance was met with some criticism as being ego-driven, Oliver stood by it, suggesting the use of the “I” speaker “enjoined the reader into the experience of the poem” (“Mary Oliver,” On Being).

In “When Death Comes,” this is achieved as the reader easily imagines themselves in place of the speaker who “want[s] to say: all my life / I was a bride married to amazement” (Lines 21-22) or the “bridegroom, taking the world into my arms” (Line 23). This allows the speaker to not only imagine the difficulty of their imminent death, but also embrace alternatives. In this way, Oliver invites the reader into the poem, as if telling them a secret of their own heart.