A death poem (絶命詩) is a poem written near the time of one's own death. It is a tradition for literate people to write one in a number of different cultures, especially in Japan and Joseon Korea, as well as certain periods of Chinese history.
Read more about Death Poem: Korean Death Poems
Famous quotes containing the words death and/or poem:
“The death of William Tecumseh Sherman, which took place to-day at his residence in the city of New York at 1 o’clock and 50 minutes p.m., is an event that will bring sorrow to the heart of every patriotic citizen. No living American was so loved and venerated as he.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“Every poem of value must have a residue [of language].... It cannot be exhausted because our lives are not long enough to do so. Indeed, in the greatest poetry, the residue may seem to increase as our experience increases—that is, as we become more sensitive to the particular ignitions in its language. We return to a poem not because of its symbolic [or sociological] value, but because of the waste, or subversion, or difficulty, or consolation of its provision.”
—William Logan, U.S. educator. “Condition of the Individual Talent,” The Sewanee Review, p. 93, Winter 1994.