Andrew Hudgins’ poetry collection The Never-Ending captures the act of dying in an elegant an insightful way. An accomplished poet Hudgins was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 (Biography in Context). From humble beginnings as an elementary school teacher in Montgomery, Alabama. Hudgins is currently a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Ohio (Biography in Context). Hudgins writes poems that capture human’s strange and fearful relationship with death and its connection to the Christian religion. While reading the collection I found myself reflecting upon my own mortality. The way in which Hudgins beautifully captures the discomfort we feel when thinking about death. I felt most connected to the works when reading
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The speaker of the poem is a child whose friend makes a black gravedigger think that he is about to spit on him. The gravedigger finds the children’s joke amusing and the speaker leaves embarrassed. Then later the two children find a black man that has been lynched. This poem is one of the few poems that touches on race, until the end of the book fifty pages later with the poem “The Unpromised Land.” To first mention race at the beginning of the book points out injustices of death, as it may disproportionately affect one group than another. The mention of such hatred draws criticism of religion as “Crucifixion” where children burn crosses as a form of intimidation towards black people. To choose to begin the book with poems on race makes the reader remember these injustices in all the poems, even if it is not directly …show more content…
This is first seen in the poem “Green Inside the Door” that occurs at the beginning of the book. A poem that occurs in the middle, on the subject, is “The Yellow Harvest.” And finally, the last few poems cover this topic extensively with poems like “Against Gardens,” “Christ as a Gardener,” and “The Garden Changes.” The garden offers a perfect example of the relationship between life and death, as things are given love to grow but in the end, they will die with the seasons. The Garden offers a perfect metaphor for the love people have for religion and receive from their God but how that will not change their ultimate
The speaker of the poem is a child whose friend makes a black gravedigger think that he is about to spit on him. The gravedigger finds the children’s joke amusing and the speaker leaves embarrassed. Then later the two children find a black man that has been lynched. This poem is one of the few poems that touches on race, until the end of the book fifty pages later with the poem “The Unpromised Land.” To first mention race at the beginning of the book points out injustices of death, as it may disproportionately affect one group than another. The mention of such hatred draws criticism of religion as “Crucifixion” where children burn crosses as a form of intimidation towards black people. To choose to begin the book with poems on race makes the reader remember these injustices in all the poems, even if it is not directly …show more content…
This is first seen in the poem “Green Inside the Door” that occurs at the beginning of the book. A poem that occurs in the middle, on the subject, is “The Yellow Harvest.” And finally, the last few poems cover this topic extensively with poems like “Against Gardens,” “Christ as a Gardener,” and “The Garden Changes.” The garden offers a perfect example of the relationship between life and death, as things are given love to grow but in the end, they will die with the seasons. The Garden offers a perfect metaphor for the love people have for religion and receive from their God but how that will not change their ultimate