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Analysis of "Posthumous" by Jean Nordhaus

Poem Found Here:  "Posthumous" by Jean Nordhaus
More about the poet: Jean Nordhaus



The first thing I wrote about this poem was, "humorous intro."  After rereading the poem a couple of times, I feel the strength of the poem is how humor is used: from the sarcastic, to the ironic, to the hyperbolic and beyond.  Yet, there's a tinge of sadness to the lines in which humor flits in and out of.

For example, "Would it surprise you to learn / that years beyond your longest winter / you still get letters from your bank,"  I find this funny.  I think it's the delivery with the first line.  I feel that the tone would be different if the first line was, "you still get letters from your bank."  What makes this humorous to me is the emotion, "surprise" playing with the idea of loss.

So the poem starts out with the image of letters still being addressed to the deceased.  The awkward syntax also adds to the humor, "Though it's been a long time since your face / interrupted the light in my door-frame." how hard is it to say it's been a while or for some time -- but the awkward syntax makes the line for me since it feels like it's a line the other would understand without losing me -- an inside joke within an internal monologue.

More humor comes with hyperbole.

[...] the last tremblings of your voice
have drained from my telephone wire,
from the lists of the likely, your name
is not missing  It circles in the shadow-world
of the machines.

I find the imagery humorous here -- probably it shouldn't be though.  "The shadow-world of machines" could be serious, but it fits for me as hyperbole spinning the images out of control for further disassociation.  Note, for an elegy, the emotional aspect, other than humor, isn't there -- there is no focus on the I speaker's emotion -- just observation of loss in a humorous way.

"Good credit / outlasts death" is just an exceptional line that sums up the humor in the poem for me -- outlasts death (posthumous).  What outlasts death but bills, messages for bills, and taxes?

The heartbreaking turn for me happens in the end.  Humor is used perfectly -- too perfectly.  Irony comes forward:

[...] Cancer and heart disease
are still counting on you for a cure.
B'nai Brith numbers you among the blessed.
They miss you.  They want you back.

There is no mention of how the other died, but at this point the implication to me is Cancer and/or heart disease.  The irony being that the other could've died of these disease and people are still asking the dead for help.

The heartbreaker for me is the "They miss you. They want you back."

In some ways, the speaker could be saying, "it's not me only, but others as well want you back" or something like, "they want you back for such humorous reasons, as for I..."  I don't know, there's a certain knife turning with the last line that skews the humor, but keeps it at the same time.

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