What are your opinions on the poem Elegy for J.F.K. by W.H. Auden? What do you feel about it? What do you think the meaning is? What is it saying?

First, start with the title. The poem is an elegy, and
elegies are written in response to the death of a person or being. So the poem is
striving to be for the remembrance of JFK, the 35th president of the United States. One
does not have to be a fan or like JFK to appreciate this
poem.

In the first stanza, the speaker of the poem is
asking several questions, questions that are often asked in reference to anyone who has
died. Mourners look to the heavens for answers to these questions and, as the speaker
writes, "The heavens are silent" (3).

In stanzas two and
three the speaker grapples with how to remember a person who has died. Is is often the
case that we say that a person and a person's memory live on within the living, and that
is what the speaker is asking us to do, as "How we choose to live/ Will decide its
meaning" (8-9).

The last stanza has the speaker coming to
terms with the gamut of human emotions surrounding death: the dichotomies, the speaker
argues, are one in the same.

I think this poem has a
certain universality to it. It can and should be appreciated by all, even those who may
not know JFK. The poem is about remembrance and lament over a person's
death.