Sorrow Is Not My Name

Gay’s “Sorrow Is Not My Name” directly responds to Gwendolyn Brooks’s “To the Young Who Want to Die,” taking up her cry to live life vibrantly and fully, rather than succumb to violence and death. Gay acknowledges that death is looming and ever-present, writing about the “brink” and the “florid, deep sleep” (Lines 1-2) in the initial lines of the poem. He knows that dark thoughts about death’s omnipresence and its inevitability exert a strong “pull” (Line 1), but he would rather focus on the sensations of joy and gratitude. The poem implies that the possibility of death makes life sweeter, demonstrating the juxtaposition in the image of the vulture: It is the “sickle of his beak” (Line 7)—the very thing that connects this bird to our personification of death—that the speaker finds aesthetically appealing, underscoring how mortality informs his understanding of beauty. The speaker and the vulture experience a kind of communion, as the bird “nod[s] his red, grizzled head” (Line 5) at the speaker, who admires it appreciatively, recognizing the freedom and loveliness in the bird’s feathers and movements. The contrast between the vulture’s proximity to death and its capacity for flight creates a complex image in which the speaker finds joy.