The Death of Aunt Alice

From this poem we can clearly see just by looking at the title that Abse is talking about a loved one within a family. Throughout the first stanza we see that it is a mournful appearance due to the imagery of a funeral being shown. From the first stanza we are able to pick out that they are within mourning due to the dark colours they are wearing and with how they talk of the aunt by saying, "Poor Alice". We also get the reference that Aunt Alice might of been a religious person due to the phrase, "your bible Page One".
From the next stanzas we see that Aunt Alice had a wild imagination and always spoke of unpleasant things at unconvenient times. From the phrase, "You talked of typhiod when we sat to eat; Fords on the M4, mangled, upside down, just when we were going for a spin" we can see the sense of humour being brought in by the persona for it shows how coincidental Aunt Alice began to create these tales. We begin to see that her imagination was fully alive and never dulled when she came to the age of an adult unlike many adults shown within Larkins poems. An example of loosing imagination within Larkins poems would  be The Study of Reading Habits. Withint his poem by Larkin we see the change of time with the persona and his love of books. As time continues we see his notions and beliefs within these books begins to change as well as his strong imagination he had when he was a child. Within Abse' poem however, we see no change come to this Aunt.
From these stanzas we see just how bazzare and unnatural her mind was and becomes humourous to the audience with sayings such as, "Pitty she ended up in a concrete-mixer".
Then within the final stanza we begin to see the reference of her no longer being with us and has fully died due to the line, "But now, never again, Alive will you utter" and "Disasters that lit your eyes will no more". From this we see that another key link within this poem is death and we are able to see that clearly through these lines. Another Larkin poem that will link to this would be An Arundel Tomb. I find this poem links well into The Death of Aunt Alice due to various reasons. One is due to the fact that there is love represented within both poems. One from the dead couple and the other of the family of Aunt Alice. Another notion is also of the reference of them both being dead but are still remembered. Aunt Alice is remembered due to her gory and horrid stories and the couple remembered due to their tomb that remains. Finally the audience is able to piece a story of the couple within the tomb by the words in the play and it continues to live on through time like the tomb itself has. We also see this notion of being remembered due to the stories within Aunt Alice with how she will continue to tell her horrific stories to the saints that are within heaven and is proven by the line, "pale saints listen... all their tall stories, your eternity".