Analysis Of Gabriel: A Poem By Edward Hirsch

1437 Words3 Pages

Edward Hirsch has published eight books of poetry and five books of prose. In the book Gabriel: A Poem by Edward Hirsch, he structures the elegy starting with death, he then remembers all the events form Gabriel’s life then back to death. Edward Hirsch also uses a three line, ten stanza form on each page, without any punctuation at all. This is to signify that the starting and stopping of punctuation cannot help with the pain of outliving your child. Hirsch once said in the New York Times that “the closer he came to the end of his memories, while writing the dossier, the more he felt that he was losing his grasp of his son.” (http://www.nytimes.com). He wanted to make something meaningful and that meant that he would have to write about more …show more content…

As a boy he tells the story of how a once a unstoppable child, that couldn’t sit still for a short period of time and a spirit unbound, one who suffered from various developmental, and anger issue. He is, a “bolt of lightning in our backyard”, “Chaotic wind of the gods”. He also recalls instances like when Gabriel broke a lamp, almost breaking the door right off the hinges, hiding in a closet so he wouldn’t have to go to school; but Gabriel was always caught. He also says, "Some nights I could not tell/If he was the wrecking ball / Or the building it crashed into."
In the New Yorker, Hirsch said, “As a small boy, he grew easily overstimulated and was subject to fits of temper. One day, he had a tantrum over taking some medicine. “He broke a lamp,” Hirsch used Gabriel’s list of medications as a soft melody to calm him down. The melody went, “clonidine/ Adderall Depakote Ritalin/ Strattera Abilify Concerta”. Personally this would take me a few times to get the pronunciation down to this song. But Hirsch uses this melody to explain to us how sick Gabriel really was, and how it really didn’t matter to Hirsch; he still loved his son and would use anything to help …show more content…

Hirsch says that this line, “a lovely line a little loathsome.” Hirsch means that it’s heartfelt but a disgusting line. He says this because his own thinking isn’t reserved like Jonson but instead he lets his thoughts, memories and emotions control his writing to help him cope. Hirsch lets his pain be known in his words. The difference is in the number of stanzas and line development. Hirsch’s three line stanzas show more emotion than the stanza used by Jonson.
Hirsch recognizes numerous poets similar to himself and Jonson, such as Margaretha Susanna von Kuntsch which wrote Occasioned by the Death of My Fifth Born Little Son the Little Chrysander or CK on the 22nd of November 1686, who lost eight sons and five daughters. Hirsch says he does not understand how she could stand it. He also has a line from Kuntsch poem, “Who will give me courage/Who will sharpen my crafty pen”. Hirsch carried this poem with him so he must have been motivated by it. And I feel that these two lines gave Hirsch motivation to start the elegy about his

Open Document