Liam Meldung - Week 3 - Pick a Poet (Mary Oliver) - “Death at a Great Distance”

        

Mary Oliver - "Death at a Great Distance"


        When I was choosing my second poem from Mary Oliver, I had a little trouble. I was reading a few different titles of poems and then I found it, “Death at a Great Distance”. I was super intrigued.

        I started reading the poem and I was a little bit confused on what the meaning was. As I read I felt like the meaning behind the poem was very explicit. The only issue I had when I was reading it was the word “amanita''. I didn’t know what it meant, but I searched up the definition and found out that it was a type of mushroom. Now that I understood pretty much every word in the poem, I started to process the rest, which didn’t take long at all. 

        I think that the meaning behind the poem is that the person in the poem ate a mushroom which I believe is poisoned.. The author writes about mushrooms and says, “... of the eventual corruption of my body” like something was happening after the mushrooms were ingested. Then she goes to say “... but of how quaint and humorous they are” talking about the corruption of the person’s body. I think this whole part means that the mushroom is poisonous and the person that ingested it is now dying slowly without knowing it. 

        In the end of the poem the author talks about how it slowly took over the body and brought the person to death. Maybe the author was trying to explain risk and how anything we choose to do can lead us to death or the end. The person just ate a mushroom, and then died at the end. That can happen in real life, just like driving is a risk we take. We decide to get in the car and drive it and we are risking hitting someone or someone hitting us. We take so many risks in the world, and we have to be more wary of our decision to take specific risks. 

Comments

  1. Michael HakimSeptember 13, 2022 at 7:00 AM

    This poem was so captivating to read. I loved the use of symbolism in it, and I personally do agree with your interpretation of it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousSeptember 13, 2022 at 1:57 PM

    I was also very intrigued by this poem upon reading it for the first time. I agree with your analysis of it and Oliver did a great job of evoking emotions of sadness, confusion and a sense of emptiness in the reader.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousSeptember 22, 2022 at 6:03 AM

    Your interpretation of this poem is quite profound. I found it very interesting the way you pieced together the poem after you read it. You used what you understood and made an interpretation that is quite intriguing.

    ReplyDelete

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