Gabriel A Poem By Edward Hirsch - 995 Words

In the book Gabriel: A Poem by Edward Hirsch, he structure the elegy starting at the funeral home where his son Gabriel lays, he then is remembering all the events form Gabriel’s life leading up to his death. Edward Hirsch uses a three line ten stanza on each page, without punctuation. This is to signify that the starting and stopping of punctuation cannot unpack the hardship of outliving your child. The three line stanzas imply the book’s most painful suggestion that, â€Å"The dead are no more than how we remember them†. Edward Hirsch starts off the elegy by writing about when they were at the funeral home, and shocked by the sight of recently deceased son. Hirsch says, â€Å"And for a moment I was taken aback/Because it was not Gabriel/ It was some poor kid/ Whose face looked like a room/ That had been vacated†. He uses these descriptive words to set the emotion and sensitivity for the rest of the poem, which is bitter and disheartening. Hirsch’s poem is not polluted by rhyme or punctuation, Hirsch’s lines manage to manifest Gabriel’s wild child energy; like a fading memory of a boy running. But the form, enacts a grieving father’s struggle at ordering the chaos that is now in his life. When he writes of â€Å"Time with its medieval chambers . . . jagged edges/ and blunt instruments,† he is also talking about how he is writing the stanzas, lines, and words and how sometimes the stanzas are short and to the point. Which being quick-tempered and resentful is an emotion that is common