Sound and Sense Chapter 9: "My Number" and "I had heard it's a fight"

            In the poems “My Number” and “I had heard it’s a fight”, the authors discuss the idea of death. Billy Collins personifies death and describes death eventually finding the speaker, even in a secluded place. Collins illustrates that death is inevitable, and that a person cannot hide from death. At the same time Collins balances the complex idea of death with humor at the end of the poem: “Did you have any trouble with the directions? I will ask, as I start talking my way out of this” (Lines 16-17). The last lines are humorous because of the thought that a person can talk their way out of death. Edwin Denby differs in the way he talks about death, because he focuses on the moment that a person is about to die. The speaker in the first stanza is basing the experience of death on what other people have told him. His tone switches in the second stanza when he is describing the afternoon when he experienced a feeling of death and decided to make changes in his life. Denby comments on how dying happens quickly: “The crazy thing, so crazy it gives me a kick: I can’t get over that minutes of dying so quick” (Lines 13-14). Denby’s last line adds more humor to the poem because he is realizing how a near-death experience that lasted him only a few moments, still is scary to him. 

             

             The tone in Denby’s poem is very casual, and makes death less meaningful because the diction is colloquial. The common diction makes the reader visualize the experience that the speaker went through and as a result, death appears to be farther away from the reader. The poem is specific to the reader, and does not make death appear to be around every corner. “My Number” is more real in the actuality of death, because of the personification used. Collins shows that death can be anywhere and the description makes death feel closer to any person’s home.