Poetic Paraphrase of Two Poems of Early Death: On the Death of Friends in Childhood" by Donald Justice and Ted Kossler's "A Child's Grave Marker"

To paraphrase a poem is to put the poem's essential, but figurative meaning into a clearer, concise, and more prosaic form. Some might deny that paraphrasing a poem can ever render the true meaning of a poem because poetic meaning, by definition, lies in the images chosen by the author, and the rhythms of language used to express that image. However, attempting to glean the philosophic truth and to tease out the construction of a poem, however imperfectly, can be useful for a student of poetry, even if the true greatness of the poem lies only within the text of the poem itself.

With this in mind, it may be said that both "On the Death of Friends in Childhood" by Donald Justice and Ted Kossler's "A Child's Grave Marker" can be characterized as poems on profound subjects, namely the young and untimely death of children. These poems attempt to...

For instance, if there is a literal heaven, the speaker or the reader of the poem will not see his or her dead childhood friends with beards or bald heads. The person, because he or she died in childhood, will resemble the child known in life, in this conception of heaven, in this imagination of the poet Justice. But because of this fact of age, the poet or the reader of the poem will meet this beloved childhood friend as a stranger. The dead children will be playing games with one another. The adult 'angel,' once a young friend, but now a grown-up, will not remember the beloved games of childhood, and will be filled with all of the…