Kevin Young's “The Mission” and Emily Dickinson's "I Heard a Fly Buzz"

The Mission by Kevin Young : Poetry Magazine

A useful, non-academic, good way to try to love poetry might be searching our own experiences for something similar to the poem we’re reading—better yet, a poem we remember and wonder why.

I suspect something like that is going on in Kevin Young’s excellent poem, “The Mission,” in which he’s remembering a funeral home across the street from his own place, probably in his youth. Those funeral scenes, homey and comforting in their way, remind him of Emily Dickinson’s “I Heard a Fly Buzz (465),” which gives him his closing line. (I was also thinking of “There’s Been a Death in the Opposite House,” discussed here last March— Banjo52: Emily Dickinson, "There’s been a Death, in the Opposite House").

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air –

Between the Heaves of Storm – 

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset – when the King

Be witnessed – in the Room – 

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away

What portions of me be

Assignable – and then it was

There interposed a Fly – 

With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –

Between the light – and me –

And then the Windows failed – and then

I could not see to see – 

Among Kevin Young’s insights or propositions that I find intriguing is his finding in those funerals across the street “less/disquiet than comfort” as “the street filled with cars/for a wake.” How might he, or we, find a wake or a funeral across the street comforting? At the end, he doesn’t want the cars to pull out and drive away; instead he tries, like a child, to achieve or recover darkness by putting his hands over his face. 

Is it, ironically, in darkness and death, in hiding from a sun “too bright” that the speaker finds permanence, stability, and in that a comfort in which things and people, such as his father, no longer leave him? In fact, at a funeral, they cluster and stand in their inexpensive suits, gathered perhaps for the very sake of comforting each other and, unwittingly, the child or young man across the street. 

Another question:  a few lines into the poem, Young refers to “the sun/of the Mission,” which is the poem’s title. How should we read that and make it part of the poem, especially with “Mission” capitalized? Is the Mission life itself, or the satisfactory exit from life, with its excessive sun? Or is it something entirely other than that? 

In any case, “The Mission” is another of those works that satisfies the requirement that a poem be a gift and give us gifts along the way. Call it scattered candy if you like (big chunks of hot dog would suit me better—bread crumbs might be too humble, too dry). There are various elements in a good poem that pull us through it—happily or at least without coercion. They make us want to return, or they simply don't allow us to forget.

The Mission by Kevin Young : Poetry Magazine

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