“The Dead” is a free-verse American sonnet by Susan Mitchell. It comes from her debut full-length collection, The Water Inside the Water (1983). The poem shares similarities with Mitchell’s older works, exploring grief and the afterlife, and uses a domestic lens to examine the relationship between the living and the dead.

Poet Biography

Susan Mitchell was born on January 20, 1944, in New York City; she later settled in Boca Raton, Florida. Mitchell studied English literature at Wellesley College, and then earned her master’s degree from Georgetown University. Her work has appeared in numerous prominent American publications, and she has released three full-length poetry collections: The Water Inside the Water (1983), Rapture (1992), and Erotikon (2000).

Mitchell’s poetry has been widely anthologized, including appearances in The Best American Poetry, and lauded for its depth and lyricality. Rapture won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1992. That same year, Mitchell was awarded the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, one of the world’s foremost literary prizes intended to support emerging writers. Her body of work has also been awarded the prestigious Pushcart Prize, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Mitchell is currently chair in Creative Writing at Florida Atlantic University.

Poem Text

Mitchell, Susan. “The Dead.” 1983. Library of Congress.

Summary

The speaker describes the way the dead spend their nights, convening at the river to drink and share their worries. They look through old photos and imagine the future paths of the living. Sometimes, they return to their homes and look for signs of who they were when they were alive. The dead share memories with each other, sometimes becoming so riotous in their storytelling that they wake the living. The speaker remembers being woken by the deceased a long time ago, when they were still alive and the speaker was only a child.