TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

Most of us are probably familiar with the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This model was developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who published a book in 1969 called On Death and Dying. Kübler-Ross used these five stages to describe what people with terminal illness experienced when facing their own death. In time, though, the model was adapted as a way of thinking about other kinds of grief. Grief in general. 

When I first learned about the five stages of grief, I thought, “That sure sounds neat and orderly to me. First stage one, then stage two, and so on.” As if, grieving a terrible loss, you might think, “Well, I’m in bargaining now, so I must be getting close to depression,” or “I’m not in denial anymore, so acceptance must be on the way.” As if you could hold a road atlas and see how far you have left to travel. 

But grief, as so many of us know, isn’t neat and orderly. Kübler-Ross knew this, too. She explained that the stages of grief are non-linear. You might only experience some of the  stages of grief. You might experience them in a completely different order. It’s more à la carte than a five-course meal.

As a poet, I think one of my personal stages of grief is writing. When I experience deep loss, there is a part of me that needs to try to articulate that loss. I wouldn’t say that writing about loss is healing; writing doesn’t restore who or what’s been lost. There are distances we can’t cross, things we can’t fully understand. But we try, with language. And there is honor in the trying.

Today’s poem articulates grief in a way I admire so deeply. It reminds me that what we do in elegies—poems for the dead—is write about life and about living.

On Proliferation
by Cass Donish

We talked about birds, assemblages, hybrids.

We talked about the gap between world with glacier
and world with image of glacier.

Now I’m left in the gap between world with you
and world with image of you.

The gap between your biological life and your so-called death.
People talk about moving on, but I’m here,

                                               in the fringe,                        in the expanse,

watching for you, listening for your song.
I surround myself with things that represent you,
things that are  you.

You charge my home. Checkerbloom, paintbrush,
tea towel, jewelflower, and the dust


                                               of rock flour                        and modern bones.

I think of your face, the image of your face, your actual face.
Every day, I talk to pictures of you.

I talk to you.  Actual you.
You said metonymy, “when it’s good,”
is more than simply language.

Change of name,
it is ontological—

                                               it is extension.                        Your existence,

you will let us in on it, if we let you.

                                 By perceiving you, I extend you.
                                 By remembering you, I extend you.
                                 By imagining you, I extend you.

Actual you.
I kiss you, my lips pressed flat to glass.

“On Proliferation” by Cass Donish from YOUR DAZZLING DEATH © 2024 Cass Donish. First published in COMP: an interdisciplinary journal. Used by permission of the poet.