| |
| | Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More - Farewell Poems |
 | | Farewell poems take an astounding variety of forms: poets have found it necessary, over the ages, to say goodbye not only to lovers, friends, and family, but also to their youth, the courtly life, the twentieth century, a rhinoceros, traffic, even the fairies of England. |
 | | Farewell poems can carry with them meditations on mortality, as poets come to realize that each earthly farewell is a preparation for the final farewell. |
 | | What distinguishes a farewell poem from an elegy or a poem of lost love is the understanding that there might be a natural order in hellos and goodbyes--the tone of a farewell poem might be melancholy, but it can also be celebratory, or sweet, or even silly. |
| www.poets.org /viewmedia.php/prmMID/5873 (711 words) |
|