One Foot in the Grave

We all die-but we all die differently. It's not death's certainty but it's unpredictability that troubles us-the when where and how of death rather than the fact. Whether our deaths come by accident illness old-age or other people it's always too late to turn back-hopefully not writhing in agony or blubbering like cowards. Death according to poet Wallace Stevens is the mother of beauty--and these poems beautiful and not. Most are meditations on what (or who) kills us--and what makes that killing somehow endurable-faith a sense of humor honesty and courage. This poet is an often married Mormon man growing older (but perhaps not up). He writes about the things and people in his life as artfully as he's able. But he doesn't know a danged thing more about his death than you do about yours.