Bidart's To The Dead

In poetry, often times the author uses punctuation and line spacing to control the pace in which the speaker conveys the message. Punctuation is not only used to control pace but also helps to communicate the intention of the poet clearly. In Bidart’s poem, To The Dead, he uses many techniques of punctuation and gives each stanza significant amounts of spacing. The title contributes to the overall theme of the poem, however, the spacing and punctuation that Bidart uses portrays the message with clarity. The poem is about a life lost and the grievances a person faces during a time of such tragedy. Bidart makes his point and shows the emotions by having the speaker drift in and out of the poem with the help of spacing and punctuation.

A poem

about pertaining to death, much like Bidart’s To The Dead, sets a tranquil and emotional state of being.

When emotions are released especially in poetry, the speaker tends to slow down as to let the words and their meaning tap into the emotions held by the poet. Bidart controls the pace by using enjambments. He writes,”It existed. It existed.” to give a long pause in one line of his poem. His pauses are well thought out as to allow the speaker to contribute to the overall theme of death. Death gives pause and Bidart wanted to show that pause in his writing. Bidart’s pauses exist to control the pace in which the speaker recites. If the poem was not recited slowly then the message and tone the speaker was attempting to convey would’ve been different. While controlling the pace in which the speaker speaks, Bidart is advertently setting the tone. Since the poem is written to the dead, it should be expected for the speaker to speak calm and slowly because it sets a more ominous tone. However, his enjambments are not only for setting pace and tone, it also serves as a reminder, to be sure that “it existed” and he’s not just hallucinating. Along with his

enjambments, Bidart also uses caesuras to allow the speaker to pause in thought. Bidart uses a caesura when he wrote, “insight like ashes: clung to; useless; hated . . .” to slow down the speaker. The words that he chose to make pauses in between are emotionally driven. He wanted his poem to be recited with the same emotional turmoil that should be felt when someone dies. His use of caesuras shows that the speaker is unfocused and drifting in and out of thought. No memory sticks of the person lost, one after the other they keep adding one, never allowing one memory to play until the end. Bidart’s use of an ellipses to end the stanza also contributes to a drifting speaker, who is there but is locked away in their own mind of past memories.
Death, by definition means the passing of someone, however not only does it take, it changes the course of emotional wellbeing.

Death plays with a person’s emotions, while to some it may react calmly, others feel cheated therefore become angry. In his poem, Bidart uses capitalization on some words within the lines. He wrote, “There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--” for emphasis on ‘night’, however, is seems as shouting. When a word is emphasized with italics of capitalization in literature, the reader pronounces the word differently or read more into its meaning or the purpose of it being there. Death is associated with darkness which is associated with night. Bidart’s uses capitalization to emphasize on the word ‘night’ because the speaker’s intention was to emphasize the word death but not explicitly saying it. The speaker is not only looking for a way to deal with the death of a loved one but is also trying to put together coherent thoughts that does not drift into each other. While at first glance the ellipses that Bidart uses to begin the line, “. . . there were (for example) months when I seemed

only
to displease, frustrate,” may seem confusing, it is anything but. The speaker’s intention was to be reminded of the happy times before death, however, the thoughts and memories were not finishing their course, instead they became a jumble of memories. The jumbled memories reveal the pain of losing someone. Due to said loss, the speaker is unable to clearly express himself and therefore speaks the poem in a beautiful mess of jumbled thoughts.
Bidart’s use of punctuation and spacing aided in making the speaker’s intention clearer. The speaker intended to grieve for a loved one by setting a calm tone but shifting to angry at coming to terms with the death. The speaker also showed the way of the mind by including the jumble thought that drift into each other when trying to remember a memory lost. The mind is like a domino effect one thought leads to another and the cycle continues leaving the person even more confused than how they started. The poem allows the speaker the release needed to survive the death of his loved one.