Response to Poem Read in Class

The thing about the poem The Starry Night is throughout the poem it seems depressing, but at the same time somehow strangely comforting; it talks about death and dying in a place meaningful to someone, but this place is also calming since the place the author is talking about seems nicely peaceful; under the big stars, in a small little town, with a giant tree - this place means a lot to a person, so why wouldn't they want to spend the last moments of their life there, if they want to die?

The poem brings out the beauty and meaning to people in simplicity like stars in the night and small towns in the middle of nowhere. The poem isn't just about dying; it expresses many emotions at once.

"The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips"

I think this is an example of the author relating to nature more than human-made places such as towns. It'd be more peaceful to die in nature than in, say, her house or other unnatural place.

"into that rushing beast of the night,
sucked up by that great dragon, to split
from my life with no flag,
no belly,
no cry."

Another example of nature; in this stanza it is described as "that rushing beast of the night", which doesn't portray nature as peaceful in that line at all. Yet still, the first two stanzas, the one before this, all end with "Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to die", and so the mix of emotions is set throughout the poem.


At first I actually didn't think this poem made sense at all, but as we went through it in class, it began to all make much more sense to me.