Joyce Sutphen Journal

               In the poem “Death Becomes Me” Sutphen describes the physical process of growing older. She attributes her ageing to death “Death has making itself at home in my body”. She illustrates death wearing down her joints and weakening her body. It does not seem like she is referring to her own death.  In the end of the poem she explains how “death” has made her infertile. Death took away the possibility of having more children.  Sutphen refers to death as “he” in her poem. The masculine pronoun changes the way the reader feels about death. She could have referred to death as it or her but she chose to call death he and him.  She says “as if he could burrow in and make himself my mother”. It seems like she is mocking death. Since she decides death is male he could not emulate her mother and it is ridiculous for him to make the decision to end her fertility.

               The poem “A Bird in a County Clare” portrays an awkward bird who hops down from a ledge. His interest is not captured by anything magnificent; instead he notices a missing branch and leaf. In the poem it is not what is there that is important but what is absent. The bird bows his head acknowledging the loss. Sutphen seems to understand the bird in this moment and says “For the first time I wondered what song he might have song, in what bare ruined choir.”