Addressing Death Anxiety

As suggested in the title, the main purpose of this poem is to provide methods that counteract concern about one’s own mortality. This can occur on a spectrum ranging from mild anxiety to the extreme stress of thanatophobia. The word “antidote” implies that fear of death can function like a poison that seeps into one’s life with debilitating consequences. It also indicates that one must take active and physical steps to counteract the poison of death anxiety. The speaker in this poem faces her own mortality through a mixture of embodied and imaginative practices.

The speaker introduces the first antidote in the beginning of the poem when she states that she “[eats] the stars” (3). This radical and somewhat startling proclamation builds on the more typical act of stargazing. Elson posits space as a source of nutrition and the stars as a form...