The Death of Aunt Alice

The 6th of my students' offerings:

 

Commentary on ‘The Death of Aunt Alice’ by Dannie Abse

The poem is triggered by the speaker thinking about “Aunt Alice’s funeral” and then goes on to talk about his peculiar memories of her and how her funeral didn’t reflect how she lived as it was “orderly” where as she catastrophised everything, perhaps to make her life more exciting.

Aunt Alice “relished high catastrophe” and made herself stand out from others, however at her funeral they were all “dressed in black”, this could suggest that no matter how different we are in life, we all amount to the same thing – death.

A link to Larkin is ‘For Sidney Bechet’, as this was a poem devoted to a jazz musician that died and ‘The Death of Aunt Alice’ is devoted to the speaker’s aunt. Despite this similarity, Abse has written his poem in a much more personal manner, as he described actual memories with her whereas Larkin was more distant with his emotions. Also, Larkin’s poem ‘Nothing To Be Said’ links to the theme of death being inevitable, like how it is described in Abse’s poem. However, the way the inevitability of death is described is much more light-hearted in Abse’s poem.

 Martyrdoms – someone that is willing to die for a cause

Admonitions – firm warning or reprimand

Typhoid – infectious bacterial fever

Imitations

The 5th of my students' offerings from group work:

‘Imitations’ by Danny Abse is a 3 stanza poem made up of 6 lines each. The poem has themes of family and change/time. The poem is basically about the persona looking at his teenage son. He sees himself in his teenage son and the son sees himself as a duplicate.

The poem is set in a house; this is shown by the quote in the first stanza which says “In this house, in this afternoon room”. Throughout the course of the poem, it appears that the seasons alternate between winter and spring. It’s clear that it is winter during the first stanza because of the fact that it mentions the “snowflakes whitewash the shed roof and the grass.”

The poem shows the slow progression of age.