Alexie and Another Poem About an Emily

¶ … Sister Buried in a Trunk" by Aaron Barth-Martinson evokes the loneliness of death and the fear that the living must encounter when death strikes down one they love. That is the case in Barth-Martinson's poem, as the narrator calls for Emily and begs her to come down to walk with him rather than die alone in her room.

The blank verse poem makes allusions to two famous Emily's of literature: Faulkner's Emily in "A Rose for Emily," and Emily Dickinson, the famous hermit poet, who died virtually unknown, with all of her poems under her bed unpublished. The allusion to the first Emily is made by the last line, "I shed a tear for Emily," as the narrator cries for the recluse. Allusion to Dickinson is made in the lines referring to the poems found in the trunk: "I found a trunk full / Of slanted verse / And I was no longer falling." These lines also reflect on the resurrecting power of poetry. Emily, who has died, has left a little piece of herself for posterity: she has left behind her poetry. The narrator, just as happened with Dickinson, finds the poems, reads them, and feels his sister is back with him.

The narrator, however, is conflicted about publishing the works of his sister: "After I made your work immortal, / You died again, in my grief." The sense is that by sharing her with the world, he has lost her again. What he wanted was to keep her with him in intimacy -- but he also wanted to make her known. Thus, the narrator of the poem mourns twice: first, for the death of his sister; and then for the second death through fame when he makes her works "immortal." The irony of the second death is what gives the most weight to the poem: the narrator, hoping to find peace, is now still haunted and still dreams that he sees his sister's shadow in the window.

Sherman Alexie's "Facebook Sonnet" is equally chilling and alludes to the ironic loneliness that underscores everyone's Facebook profile and Facebook socialization. Everyone's private lives are on display as though to make up for some emptiness or empty hole in each individual who is trying to fill it by putting themselves on display on the social networking site. There they build an altar to themselves, as Alexie states: "Let's sign up, sign in, and confess / Here at the altar of loneliness." Everyone, he laments, is living a superficial, artificial dot.com life. There is nothing real or genuine about it, which only adds to the ironic loneliness of the Facebook life.