“Who ever heard of a bad poet committing suicide?” ……………….. – Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos
Berryman off a Midwest span. Carbon monoxide, Sexton’s plan.
Lysol cocktail for Charlotte Mew. The same for Vachel Lindsay, too.
Teasdale absorbed sleeping pills. Chatterton—arsenic for his ills.
Crane off the Orizaba’s stern. Hemingway by a shotgun’s burn.
Plath in an oven chose to go. Parker thought it over and said, “No.”
So many by their own hand dead. Me? From old age in my own bed.