A couple weeks ago the Globe ran a "First Person" piece entitled "Why everyone should write their own obituary" by Penny Lipsett. After reading the piece I thought of artist Ken Lum's recent obituary paintings, but also Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology (1915), and then a social media declaration heralding a new book of poems by Tess Liem called Obits. (2018).
For fun, I began my auto-obituary, but without the usual places, dates and times, and in the third-person, no less. This is how far I got:
On everyone's payroll, yet devoted to a life of poverty -- if he was not invented he would have to have been born. And he was, years ago -- long enough to have learned how to even think such a thing, grow into his subjection. As he once said. As he once wrote. As he carried on, carried, a carrier who cared.
No comments:
Post a Comment