Sissman, L. E. (Louis Edward) : A Deathplace

Literature Annotations

Genre	Poem
Keywords	Anesthesia, Cancer, Chronic Illness/Chronic Disease, Death and Dying, Hospitalization, Patient Experience, Suffering, Surgery
Summary	In "A Deathplace" the speaker recounts, with seeming nonchalance, the predictable sequence of his own death. He describes the hospital he knows so well, the details of surgery (down to "the buttered catheter goes in"), the "malignant plum," and finally "the hour / when the authorities shut off the power . . ." Sissman uses the power shut-off to signify his own death, but soon the lights go up and throughout the hospital the "business of life" resumes. Part of that business is to move his body to the morgue, then to the undertaker, then "That's all."
Commentary	Sissman was an advertising executive who suffered from and eventually died of Hodgkin's disease. Much of his later poetry was influenced by the experience of his chronic, debilitating illness.
Source	Hello Darkness: The Collected Poems of L. E. Sissman
Publisher	Little, Brown
Edition	1978
Editors	Peter Davison
Place Published	Boston
Alternate Source	On Doctoring
Alternate Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Alternate Edition	1995, 2001
Alternate Editors	Richard Reynolds & John Stone
Place Published	New York
Miscellaneous	First published: 1969. Also available in Sissman, L.E., Night Music (Boston: Houghton Mifflin) 1999.
Annotated by	Coulehan, Jack
Date of Entry	02/22/94
Last Revised	02/22/10