i have to write an argumentive essay on death in poetry.
any suggestions of poems, authors, or points to be made in the essay?

Lots of poets were fascinated by death. Poe & Beddoes, for example. Lots of poets committed suicide: Plath, Sexton, Hart Crane, Teasdale (hmmm, mostly women, sorry). Is Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods about death? Search Google for suicidal poets and/or death poetry for tons of inspiration.

a brief site but some good examples:

[www.hibbert-assembly.org.uk]

Points to be made, death as a human event preoccupies many writers including poets, as can be witnessed by the evidence here: [www.poemhunter.com]



The Dying Need But Little, Dear,--
---Emily Dickinson

The dying need but little, dear,--
A glass of water's all,
A flower's unobtrusive face
To punctuate the wall,

A fan, perhaps, a friend's regret,
And certainly that one
No color in the rainbow
Perceives when you are gone.


Les

tennyson wrote good poems about the death of his best friend. They are called In memoriam. Here's a nice example:

Dark House

Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street.
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand.

A hand that can be clasped no more –
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.

What kind of angle do you want to choose? For example, how did poets think about the after-life? How did they cope with grief? Were they thinking about suicide? Are you going to focus on poems with a theme of hope? Or more hopelessness?

Try to find an angle that interests you, that will make it a lot easier! Good luck.

There's any number of "poets" who are certainly doing their best to kill poetry

That might be a novel apporach for an essay