Everyone has experienced grief. Everyone has felt those intense rolling waves of emotion. But does everyone experience the same feelings each time they loose a loved one? In this extreme and expressive poem, "The Five Stages of Grief", Pastan shows the yearning of an individual while they're still facing reality through the use of tropology and effective diction. The theme recognizes the anxiety of one whose life has been shattered into pieces; a life in which circular staircases repeats itself throughout an emotional event.

The poem works its way through how the persona copes with the process of grief. The word "denial" is used as an isolation which the persona faces. Using the word allows the reader to know how the loss of a loved one could be considerably astonishing; and most likely not believing...