The document is a poetry anthology containing 4 poems with the common theme of death. The first poem "Futility" reflects on the meaningless death of soldiers in war. The second poem "In Flanders Fields" presents death in war as a sacrifice rather than futile. The third poem "Losses" portrays death in war as normal and expected. The last poem "Ode to the Maggot" praises death as unavoidable and providing order to life.

1. My Poetry Anthology By Natalia D’Espósito

2. FUTILITY Wilfred Owen Move him into the sun - Gently its touch awoke him once At home, whispering of fields unsown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now. The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds, Woke, once, the clays of a cold star Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides, Full-nerved, – still warm, - to hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth’s sleep at all?

3. In Flanders Fields John McCrae In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

4. Losses Randal Jarrell It was not dying: everybody died. It was not dying: we had died before In the routine crashes – and our fields Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks, And the rates rose, all because of us. We died on the wrong page of the almanac, Scattered on mountains fifty miles away; Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend, We blazed up on the lines we never saw. We died like aunts or pets or foreigners. (When we left high school nothing else had died For us to figure we had died like) In our new planes, with our new crews, we bombed The ranges by the desert or the shore, Fired at towed targets, waited for our scores And turned into replacements and woke up One morning, over England, operational. It wasn’t different: but if we died It was not an accident but a mistake (But an easy one for anyone to make) We read our mail and counted up our missions – In bombers named for girls, we burned The cities we had learned about in school – Till our lives wore out, our bodies lay among The people we had killed and never seen. When we lasted long enough they gave us medals; When we died thay said, “Our casualties were low”.

5. Ode To The Maggot Yusef Komunyakaa Brother of the blowfly And godhead, you work magic Over battlefields, In slabs of bad pork And flophouses. Yes, you Go to the root of all things. You are sound & mathematical. Jesus, Christ, you're merciless With the truth. Ontological & lustrous, You cast spells on beggars & kings Behind the stone door of Caesar's tomb Or split trench in a field of ragweed. No decree or creed can outlaw you As you take every living thing apart. Little Master of earth, no one gets to heaven Without going through you first

6. Analysis I chose a thematic criterion for this selection of poems. The four poems selected have the theme of ‘death’ in common. However, although the texts share the same topic, I think they have different approaches to this theme. The first poem, “Futility”, talks about death from the point of view of soldiers at war. It reflects the meaningless death of hundreds of people and the waste of dreams and youth. It portrays the uselesness of living. The second poem is about war as well, and it is also told by a soldier. However, the difference is that death is not considered to be pointless here. On the contrary, it is taken as something worthy of the sacrifice, as a legacy for others to continue the battle against the enemy. There is no futility or meaninglessness in dying in “In Flandres fields” In the third poem, “Losses”, also about war, death is considered something normal, even expected. Soldiers are supposed to die at war but, if they manage to avoid death, they are given medals for their courage and bravery. The last poem, “Ode to the Maggot”, the only poem completely devoted to the topic of death, has a completely different point of view. It seems to be praising death, as something unavoidable and as an element that provides an order to life and universe.

7. My Poetry Anthology Literature in English III 2011