Books :: Death’s Door by Sandra M. Gilbert

Death is the new sex. Sandra M. Gilbert’s new book takes an unflinching look at the last taboo. By Kal Munger, Sacramento News & Review.

Death’s Door is very personal; Gilbert returns again and again to her own loss as she surveys Western attitudes toward death. But her examination–including the institutionalization of the dying and the medical and technological attention given to a passage that once took place in the home–always returns to poetry. “We’re always struggling to control death,” she said. “Poetry reminds us that we can’t.”

…Gilbert believes the study of literature is necessary to understand death “because poets and writers are the ones who refuse to believe that there’s any kind of control over death, and they are not embarrassed by that lack of control.”