Original artwork, not a still
Selected Letters of James Thurber
There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.
Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
The joke imagines a poet dying before being born, pushing an impression of remoteness into an impossible chronology. The precise span of twenty years makes the absurdity sound considered. One reading concerns the way poets can seem detached from ordinary, present-day life.
Context reviewed
