It is quite widespread in poetry today the see many allusions to death and dying amongst main characters or narrators. In the poems "Next, Please" by Philip Larkin, "The Performance" by James Dickey and "Little Cosmic Dust Poem" by John Haines, there is a common element in which all have placed an assortment of representations of death either actually acknowledged or placed in a way which requires investigative thinking to divulge. Although the poems may not all have the same topic or have the same suggestion to death placed in their poem. This paper will discuss where and how these allusions to death are positioned in these poems.
             "Next, Please" by Philip Larkin is a poem about the course of life and the trials in life. In this poem life is represented as a fleet of ships as shown by lines 5 and 6 of the poem which state "Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear/ Sparkling Armada of promises draw near". The narrator speaks of how this fleet of ships is moving so slowly which is a representation of how life moves so slowly and how it seems like major points of ones life takes so long to arrive. The Narrator talks about how he hopes on of these ships will stop and unload its cargo when he states in lines 18 and 19 "We think each one will heave to and unload/All good into our lives, all we are owed". This statement is symbolic to life in that you wait and wait for something good to come along and sometimes things just pass you by with out stopping. The Narrator also makes an allusion to how things may look good and grand but they will soon fade away when he writes "Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits/Arching our way, it never anchors; it's/No sooner present than it turns to past" in lines 13-15. Finally in the end of the poem the narrator speaks of the ship with the Black Mast. This ship represents death. Thi
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