Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Dorianne Laux’s “Abschied Symphony” is an unflinching exploration of grief and the relentless intrusion of mortality into the minutiae of everyday life. The poem takes its title from Haydn’s Farewell Symphony (often referred to as the Abschied Symphony), and this connection to classical music serves as a fitting frame for a meditation on departure and the irrevocable finality of death. Laux employs a stream-of-consciousness narrative, blending stark imagery and sensory details to create a textured portrait of emotional and existential reckoning.

The poem opens with a direct and poignant declaration: “Someone I love is dying.” This stark statement sets the tone, immediately situating the reader within the speaker?s emotional landscape. The act of turning the key in the ignition and being enveloped by Haydn’s music becomes a moment of unwelcome clarity, where even the mundane task of navigating a parking garage is imbued with symbolic weight. The dimly lit tunnels and yellow arrows evoke the speaker’s sense of being trapped in a labyrinth, much like the inescapable journey toward loss that she is navigating. Haydn’s fugue, with its diminishing and layered structure, mirrors both the complexity of grief and the gradual ebbing of the loved one’s life.

Laux masterfully transforms the everyday into a field of heightened significance, where even the tollgate attendant and the midday light are tainted by the speaker’s emotional state. The attendant, indifferent and wrapped in smoke-like curls of white hair, contrasts with the speaker?s raw sensitivity, highlighting her isolation in the midst of a functional, detached world. The blinding midday light, far from offering clarity or hope, feels overwhelming, intensifying her disorientation.

The speaker’s acute awareness of her surroundings imbues every object and experience with symbolic resonance: the “Chevron truck,” the “dead wedding bouquets” in the Dumpster, the aroma of coffee wafting from a café. These objects, though mundane, are transfigured into emblems of transience and decay. The poem’s progression suggests that grief renders the speaker incapable of separating the external world from her inner turmoil; everything she encounters becomes a reflection of the impending loss and its suffocating weight.

The second stanza shifts inward, expressing a yearning for “the blessing of inattention.” The speaker longs for the numbing comfort of oblivion, to escape the relentless mental and emotional associations triggered by the illness of her loved one. Yet, despite this desire, she remains trapped in the vivid and painful memories of intimacy: “flesh I have kissed, stroked with my fingertips, / pressed my belly and breasts against.” These tender recollections of physical closeness are tinged with anguish as the speaker imagines the invasive progression of tumors beneath the surface of the skin she once cherished.

Laux’s language here is visceral and evocative, blurring the lines between the physical and the metaphysical. The speaker’s imagined desire to “enter him” and traverse his body—“nudge the coral of his brain,” “brush... the blue coils of his bowels”—underscores both her love and the futility of her longing to merge with him and alleviate his suffering. The metaphor of a “small fish” swimming through his body evokes an image of intimacy and unity, but also the fragility of life itself.

The speaker’s stark acknowledgment—“Death is not romantic”—brings the poem back to its brutal core. Grief, stripped of romanticism, becomes a relentless and isolating reality. The imagery of music as a “black note / on an empty staff” encapsulates the starkness of her loss, emphasizing the absence and silence that death leaves behind. The music, once a source of solace or beauty, becomes unbearable, “slowing the world down / with its lurid majesty” and transforming every detail into a memorial to life. Even the most insignificant objects, such as “nasturtiums clinging to a fence,” radiate with unbearable poignancy, reminding the speaker of life’s fragile persistence.

In the final lines, the poem turns outward toward the cosmos, offering a glimpse of transcendence or, at the very least, an acknowledgment of the vastness beyond human comprehension. The image of music spilling upward “past the last rim of blue and into the black pool / of another galaxy” suggests a yearning for meaning or peace in the face of death. Yet, the idea that “emptiness” might be “a place of benevolence” remains tentative and unresolved, echoing the speaker’s struggle to reconcile loss with hope.

Structurally, the poem is free-flowing, mirroring the stream-of-consciousness nature of grief. The long sentences and enjambment create a sense of breathlessness and emotional momentum, while the absence of stanza breaks underscores the unrelenting nature of the speaker’s thoughts. Laux’s diction, both vivid and precise, captures the raw intensity of emotion while maintaining a grounded realism.

“Abschied Symphony” is a deeply human poem, grappling with the profound and universal experience of impending loss. Through its interplay of personal memory, sensory detail, and existential questioning, the poem invites readers to confront the inevitability of death and the ways in which grief reshapes our perception of the world. Laux’s ability to infuse the ordinary with extraordinary emotional weight ensures that this meditation on loss resonates long after the final note.

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