Paraphrasing Two Poems About Childhood Death: Justice and Kooser
This paper paraphrases and analyzes two poems that confront the theme of children's untimely death: Donald Justice's "On the Death of Friends in Childhood" and Ted Kooser's "A Child's Grave Marker." The paper begins by defending the value of poetic paraphrase as a tool for students of poetry, then proceeds to unpack the figurative meaning of each poem. Justice's poem imagines reunion with dead childhood friends in heaven, stressing the unbridgeable distance between adult memory and childlike innocence. Kooser's poem takes a more detached perspective, focusing on the physical grave marker and the inadequacy of material objects to express grief. Both poems ultimately explore the human inability to connect with the young dead.
- The Value of Poetic Paraphrase: Defends paraphrase as a useful tool for poetry students
- Two Poems on Childhood Death: Introduces both poems and their shared subject
- Paraphrasing Justice's 'On the Death of Friends in Childhood': Prose paraphrase and thematic reading of Justice's poem
- Paraphrasing Kooser's 'A Child's Grave Marker': Paraphrase of Kooser's more detached, material perspective
- Thematic Comparison: Disconnection and Grief: Shared theme of inability to connect with the young dead
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper opens with a clear defense of the paraphrase method, acknowledging its limitations before demonstrating its usefulness — a rhetorically honest move that strengthens credibility.
- Each poem receives its own focused section, allowing readers to follow the paraphrase and thematic commentary without confusion between the two works.
- The closing comparison draws a meaningful thematic link — the shared motif of disconnection between the living (or aging) and the young dead — without forcing the two poems into artificial similarity.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates close reading through paraphrase: rather than quoting and annotating lines, the student restates the poem's meaning in prose and then extracts its philosophical implications. This technique shows comprehension of figurative language, tone, and theme without relying on direct quotation as a crutch.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief theoretical justification for paraphrase, introduces both poems together, then devotes a substantial paragraph to each poem individually. It closes by drawing a thematic comparison, identifying a shared concern — the inaccessibility of the young dead — as the emotional and philosophical core of both works. The structure moves from methodology to analysis to synthesis.
The Value of Poetic Paraphrase
To paraphrase a poem is to put the poem's essential but figurative meaning into a clearer, more concise, and more prosaic form. Some might deny that paraphrasing a poem can ever render its true meaning, because poetic meaning, by definition, lies in the images chosen by the author and in the rhythms of language used to express those images. 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 itself.
Two Poems on Childhood Death
With this in mind, it may be said that both "On the Death of Friends in Childhood" by Donald Justice and Ted Kooser's "A Child's Grave Marker" can be characterized as poems on a profound subject: the young and untimely death of children. These poems attempt to shed light upon a profound and unanswerable moral quandary — why are young people cut down before their time — through the use of simple and striking images.
Paraphrasing Justice's 'On the Death of Friends in Childhood'
A paraphrase of "On the Death of Friends in Childhood" by Donald Justice might read as follows: those friends whom one knew in childhood will never take on an adult appearance, should one meet them in heaven. For instance, if there is a literal heaven, the speaker — or the reader — will not see his or her dead childhood friends with beards or bald heads. The person, having died in childhood, will resemble the child known in life, in this conception of heaven and in this imagination of the poet Justice. Yet because of this difference in age, the poet or the reader will meet this beloved childhood friend as a stranger.
The dead children will be playing games with one another. The adult, once a young friend but now grown, will not remember the beloved games of childhood and will be filled instead with all the memories and cares of maturity — of the life he or she has led since the death of the childhood friend. However, despite the poignancy of this image of two old friends meeting as shadows, unable to truly connect even in the afterlife, the poem ends on an uplifting note. The poet Donald Justice calls upon the reader to seek, in memory, the childhood self, as well as to remember the childhood playmate.
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