Louis Untermeyer’s Deaths of the Poets

They buried Edgar Allan Poe
with a haunted hoe.

They deposited Robert Frost, I fear,
without a farmhouse near.

They cremated Wallace Stevens,
and sneezed, “That makes us evens.”

They shoveled William Carlos Williams
until he surfaced with them Chinese billions.

They saved Allen Ginsburg’s dead feet
to keep alive the Beat.

What’s in that blueblood bowl?
The confessional heart of Robert Lowell.

And that’s his cousin Amy’s butt,
ten times bigger that King Tut’s.

When they put to rest James Dickey,
his neck was one huge backwoods hickey.

Why did Robert Creeley choose to depart
from a place so devoid of taste and art?

Hart Crane needed no undertakers,
he dug a hole into the breakers.

Warm was Carl Sandburg
before he turned into a gnarled iceberg.

Berryman thought he was one the Wright Brothers,
but he was just one of the Blues Brothers.

Delmore died in a cheap hotel
so he could get used to hell.

James Wright wasted his life.
Add his offspring, and that’s twice.

A poet’s death should always be poetic,
even if his life is boring and pathetic.