Do Not Go Gentle: poems for funerals

This wide-ranging selection combines popular choices of traditional poems read at funerals with powerful poems by contemporary writers more tuned to our present age of doubt and disbelief. There are poems here for churchgoers and believers, including classic verses of grief and consolation by John Donne, Christina Rossetti, Emily Bronte and Emily Dickinson, the anonymous Do not stand at my grave and weep, and the poems read at Princess Diana's funeral. But there are also poems for people of all faiths and religions, for agnostics and atheists, and most importantly for those who aren’t sure what they believe, whose grief over loss is the more intense for not knowing what happens to the soul after death. Grief isn’t denied but experienced and made more bearable by being put into memorable words. Searing poems of lament are followed by moving elegies celebrating the lives of those we will always love. Whether and how the spirit survives is then explored in an extraordinary gathering of poems by writers as different and diverse as the Persian mystic Rumi, Zen Buddhist composers of Japanese haiku, and American poets Mary Oliver and Jane Kenyon. Buttressed against their assertions of faith in an afterlife are modern sceptics, from Auden and Larkin to William Carlos Williams and C.K. Williams, whose wrestling with the meaning of death helps us make sense of no sense, mirroring our own anxieties and difficulties. But however various and contradictory these poems, their message chimes with Larkin’s famous words, proving 'Our almost-instinct almost true:/ What will survive of us is love.' Unlike other poetry anthologies of loss, mourning and remembrance, Do Not Go Gentle offers a selection of poems specifically for reading at funerals and memorial services. It can also be used for reading aloud to friends and family, or for reading while numbed and bewildered – all times when the right poem can help us share and bear the burden of immediate grief.

Table of Contents:
1: STOP ALL THE CLOCKS: poems of grief W.H. Auden 10 Funeral Blues C.K. Williams 10 Wept Norman MacCaig 12 Memorial R.S. Thomas 12 Comparisons Christina Rossetti 13 Remember Linda Pastan 14 The Five Stages of Grief Rudyard Kipling 15 The Widower Janet Frame 16 The Suicides George Herbert 17 Life Robert Herrick 17 Epitaph Upon a Child That Died Edwin Muir 18 The Child Dying Ben Jonson 19 On My First Sonne Hugh O’Donnell 19 Light D.J. Enright 20 On the Death of a Child Anonymous 20 The Unquiet Grave Emily Brontë 21 Remembrance James Russell Lowell 22 After the Burial Adrian Mitchell 24 Especially When It Snows 2: LIVES ENRICHED: poems of celebration Edgar A. Guest 26 Because He Lived Robert Burns 26 Epitaph on a Friend Brendan Kennelly 27 The Good Stephen Dobyns 28 When a Friend William Shakespeare 29 Cleopatra’s Lament for Antony William Shakespeare 30 Dirge for Fidele David Constantine 31 ‘We say the dead depart’ Anonymous 32 ‘Not, how did he die, but how did he live?’ Alfred, Lord Tennyson 32 from In Memoriam A.H.H. Langston Hughes 33 As Befits a Man Joyce Grenfell 33 from Joyce: By Herself and Her Friends William Carlos Williams 34 Tract Raymond Carver 36 Gravy Basho 36 Haiku 3: I AM NOT THERE: body & spirit Anonymous 38 ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep’ Christina Rossetti 38 Song Mary Lee Hall 39 Turn Again to Life Henry van Dyke 39 For Katrina’s Sun Dial Bhartrhari 40 ‘Thinking I enjoyed the pleasures of life’ D.H. Lawrence 40 Demiurge Gail Holst-Warhaft 41 In the End Is the Body Pablo Neruda 42 Sonnet lxxxix Issa 42 Haiku Abu al-Ala al-Ma‘arri 43 The Soul Driven from the Body Devara Dasimayya 43 ‘I’m the one who has the body’ Ruth Pitter 44 The Paradox Rumi 44 ‘Everything you see’ 4: THE DYING OF THE LIGHT: pain & resolution Dylan Thomas 46 Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night W.E. Henley 46 Invictus David Wright 47 Arcadia Czeslaw Milosz 49 On Parting with My Wife, Janina Pamela Gillilan 50 from When You Died Philip Larkin 52 Aubade C.K. Williams 53 from Le Petit Salvié Anne Stevenson 57 The Minister Virginia Hamilton Adair 58 A Last Marriage 5: THE OTHER SIDE: comfort & haunting Jane Kenyon 60 Notes from the Other Side Thom Gunn 60 The Reassurance Patricia Pogson 61 Breath C.K. Williams 62 Oh Ken Smith 63 Years go by Brendan Kennelly 64 I See You Dancing, Father Patrick Kavanagh 65 In Memory of My Mother Billy Collins 66 The Dead Vladimír Holan 66 Resurrection Charles Causley 67 Eden Rock Jeanne Willis 67 Inside Our Dreams Meera 68 Song Shiki 68 Haiku 6: NOTHING DIES: release & letting go Emily Dickinson 70 After Great Pain Mary Oliver 70 In Blackwater Woods Walt Whitman 71 from Song of Myself Rumi 73 Unmarked Boxes Mona Van Duyn 74 The Creation Thomas Hardy 77 Heredity Alice Walker 78 ‘Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning David Ignatow 78 Kaddish R.S. Thomas 79 A Marriage Wendell Berry 80 Three Elegiac Poems Jane Kenyon 82 In the Nursing Home Rumi 82 ‘Why cling’ Mary Oliver 83 When Death Comes Stevie Smith 84 Come, Death John Donne 84 ‘Death be not proud’ Anne Ridler 85 Nothing Is Lost Jane Kenyon 86 Let Evening Come Louis MacNeice 87 from Autumn Journal Anonymous 87 A Celtic Blessing Raymond Carver 88 No Need Alden Nowlan 88 This Is What I Wante to Sign Off With Raymond Carver 89 Late Fragment Pablo Neruda 89 Dead Woman Kaniyan Punkunran 90 Every Town a Home Town Brendan Kennelly 91 Begin 92 Acknowledgements 95 Index of writers

About the Author :
Neil Astley is editor of Bloodaxe Books, which he founded in 1978. His books include novels, poetry collections and anthologies, most notably those in Bloodaxe's Staying Alive anthology series: Staying Alive (2002), Being Alive (2004), Being Human (2011), and Staying Human (2020), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation; and three collaborations with Pamela Robertson-Pearce, Soul Food: nourishing poems for starved minds (2008), and the DVD-books In Person: 30 Poets (2008) and In Person: World Poets (2017). He has published two novels, The End of My Tether (2002), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, and The Sheep Who Changed the World (2005). He received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry, was given a D.Litt from Newcastle University for his work with Bloodaxe Books, and in 2018 was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He also guest-edited a transatlantic all-poetry issue of the American literary journal Ploughshares, the first such issue in its 43-year history. He lives in the Tarset Valley of Northumberland, England.