Analysis Of How To Watch Your Brother Die By Billy Collins

Billy Collins born in 1941 and wrote Introduction to Poetry in 1988. Billy Collins wrote the speaker of the poem to be a teacher who is wanting his students to read a poem. He gives some examples of how he wants his students to read a poem. The examples he used could be analyzed to mean that he wants his students to take their time, be open-minded and patient, while not over thinking it. He wants his students to use different literature tools to see who the author is, who is the poem speaker, and what the poem means to the students.

“How to Watch Your Brother Die” by Michael Lassell was published in 1990 for Carl Morse impacted me the most. The poem struck deep within me because I know how it feels to lose someone close to you and watch their life slowly leave them and being able to do nothing about it. The brother was shown frustrated because there was nothing he could do to help his brother. The silent last apologies and “I love you’” was similar to my experience as well. Then choosing to relish in the memory of the loved one at their best instead of their last days.

It let the readers see it from a loving brother’s perspective, to see his thoughts, loss, and questions. The poem by Michael Lassell does not have a rhyme scheme. There were a lot of imagery and word choices that stood out. When he said “looks like a cadaver” and “Listen to the doctor with a steel face on”. It brought me back to when I took my dying grandma to the hospital and in her final days, looking past how she looked, grey and almost