# ID this poem?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-this-poem/688080>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [May 9, 2014, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-this-poem/688080 "2014-05-09T20:00:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kambria](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eb9ed0/32.png) [@kambria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambria)\
**Post date:** [May 9, 2014, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-this-poem/688080/1 "2014-05-09T20:00:26Z")

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I read a poem in a college lit class and have searched for it unsuccessfully in the intervening years. It was a poem about a funeral–more precisely, about the carrying of the deceased to the burial–in which the corpse is accidentally allowed to fall from the coffin and…well…roll downhill. It was darkly funny.

I remember the author as Gwendolyn Brooks, but time clouds memory and I may be way off the mark. In any case, help is most appreciated.

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**Author:** ![Kimble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kimble/32/19185_2.png) [@Kimble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimble)\
**Post date:** [May 9, 2014, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-this-poem/688080/2 "2014-05-09T20:20:55Z")

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Seems a little like _As I Lay Dying_ mixed with Brooks’s “[the rites for Cousin Vit](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182621)”. But neither of those are particularly close matches.