An analysis of J. Daniel West’s ‘wikipedia page funeral’ from All the Rot

I think we all have Rot. Stuff inside that feels wrong, decayed, spoiled, broken. 

J. Daniel West thinks so too. His monolithic poetry collection All The Rot tackles ideas of grief, growth, endings, and so much more that comes with early adulthood. This blog post will be a close reading of one of the poems in this collection entitled ‘wikipedia page funeral’. If you want to read more of West’s work, you can buy the full collection here. Find West on Instagram and Bluesky @archaeologyboy.

‘Wikipedia page funeral’ comes in the middle of the collection, West saying this section is based on ‘self-reflection and improvement’. He elaborates, detailing ‘the section as a whole explores what it means to work through past traumas and current shortcomings, and how even though they are legitimate, they don’t excuse certain types of negative behaviour’.

We can view this poem already as a self-reflective look at a funeral. The poem opens with a sense of alienation with the simple phrase ‘I stand alone’. The following addition ‘awkwardly in the car park’ feels contextual, highlighting the narrator’s loneliness as his overwhelming experience. In addition, the first stanza includes the phrases ‘dodging’, ‘I do not recognise’ and ‘avoiding’ to create an atmosphere of isolation. The active verbs imply that some of this isolation is in part due to the narrator’s will. 

Throughout the poem, there is a motif of ‘leaves’, whether the material plant or the verb. The first instance of this is the phrase ‘Instead, I follow the wind dance through the leaves’. The personification of the wind gives the narrator a wider, abstract presence to attach themself to, perhaps an attempt to denote some of this apparent loneliness. The leaves are somewhat associated with his family members, yet the narrator follows the ‘wind’, as if he is separate and yet fully entwined with his family tree. 

The second instance of ‘leaves’ occurs in the second stanza as the hearse’s ‘quiet and clandestine arrival leaves // a thick atmosphere’. The ‘thick atmosphere’ arguably stifles the wind the narrator was following, leaving him stuck in the leaves of his family. Furthermore, the verb ‘leaves’ is now associated with death, the enjambement creating a stark cut off. The narrator also refers to a ‘veneer of beech’ in which the years hide behind. This could be in reference again to the family tree in which time and complex relationships can hide behind in order to avoid confrontation. On the other hand, the tree could be portraying a symbol of growth which ‘accumulated years hide behind’, as if wasted time hides behind the perception of progress. 

The third stanza has two lines starting with ‘away’, elevating the desire for the narrator to avoid the situation. He details his ‘face burning hot’, conveying destructive anger and embarrassment that threatens the facade of the family tree. 

The narrator then addresses the deceased person, noticing how ‘a television above you shows leaves // falling gracefully’. Instead of the leaves burning from the narrator’s face, or danced through by the wind, the leaves now fall gracefully, bringing a symbol of peaceful transition. The narrator likens the televised leaves to the ones on ‘my blue shirt or my mum’s pink dress’. It underlines the fact that they are not wearing black to this funeral, emphasising a joyful and playful nature of the deceased person. 

Towards the end of the poem, it becomes clear that the deceased person struggled with dementia, explaining why the narrator felt like a ‘stranger in your family // home’. This idea of forgetting ties in with the separation the narrator feels from the rest of the mourners, as if the sad loss of memory has materialised. 

Now the narrator has ‘tears on hot cheeks’, the emotion perhaps extinguishing some of the anger. He then turns to ‘look at the one who gave such hollow words. // A man long estranged from all his family’. By this point, it’s purposefully ambiguous whether the narrator is the man in question, who has become a stranger not just to the mourners or the deceased person but now himself. West has stated that the man is a ‘family member who imposed estrangement on himself and I swore I’d never become him, yet this poem is the realisation I’m becoming exactly what I didn’t want.’ Considering this, the figure becomes an uncanny double, mirroring both the narrator’s present anxieties and future destination.

The poem ends with the narrator attempting to ‘park the ache and think of the years // we enjoyed before the leaves started to turn’. This connects the natural cycle of life as destructive, as well as his family. 

Ultimately, West’s poem leaves room for guessing as well as presenting a narrator lost in grief, guilt, anger, and confliction. Motifs of nature and trees depict a complex relationship with ideas of family and grief. For more of West’s poetry visit our shop!