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“Funeral Blues” has a very generic setting that could, in theory, take place anywhere in the world. The only thing we know for sure is that the poem is set sometime in the twentieth century, as indicated by the references to “telephone,” “aeroplanes,” and “traffic policemen” (lines 1, 5, and 8). What’s more important than these details, however, are the references to a funeral—both in the poem’s title and at the end of the first stanza: “Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come” (line 4). So, the poem takes place during a funeral. On a general level, a funeral is a ceremony that serves to honor the memory of a person who has died. Yet common wisdom also teaches that funerary rites are less for the dead and more for the bereaved. After all, it’s the living who hold funerals to help them process loss and come to grips with grief. In this sense, then, we might also read the poem as taking place in the more abstract “emotional space” of the speaker’s mourning. Such a reading makes sense, given that the speaker only barely mentions the funeral, focusing instead on the pain of his or her loss.

Next section Themes

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