Chapter 9 Sound and Sense (paired poems)

"My Number" and "I had heard it's a fight" are two poems that deal with the topic of death in different manners. Billy Collins' poem, "My Number" personifies death as human like. He goes through different actions that a human would do like, "breathing," "reaching," "scattering," etc. His relationship with death seems much more casual; the speaker knows that death will come, its human, but he doesnt really want it to come. The speaker in Collins' poem can be seen as cowardly. Rather than confronting death and fighting it, he hopes that death is too busy with other people to notice him. Instead of using his last bit of energy to fight off death, he hopes to "[talk his] way out of this." The speaker also seems distracted by death. He writes all about the things death has done, like "scattering cancer cells," instead of writing a poem about his life. While the speaker spends a lot of his time thinking about what death is like he is distracted from his own life.  In Edwin Denby's poem, "I had heard it's a fight" the speakers relationship with death is much more strained. He seems to be less familiar with the idea, but ready to fight it. Denby seems to have learned a lesson that Collins hasnt yet, and that is not to pay too much attention to death. Denby describes an incident where he let death come a little too close, but like a schoolboy drinking for the first time, quickly put it to an end. He uses the words "crazy" and "quick" to show how important it is to lead a meaningful life in his last two lines. Unlike Collins, he doesnt see death as devious, but something that will just happen. While Denby seems to be less scared of death, I thought that Collins poem was enjoyable also. Collins is able to make it kind of comical, despite his clearly negative view.