There is a “bent photo” in the fifth stanza that leads to more questions. The speaker suggests one extreme and then the other.
Would it be wrong to wash his “soiled linen?” There are no instructions on how to act or how to treat someone’s belongings. In the next stanzas, the speaker contemplates the man’s belongings and which ones should be kept, and how they should be treated. The second stanza is also a good example of how the writer uses imagery within the text. They are treated equally as though they are just as important to that person’s life.
The juxtaposition between memory and belongings is an interesting one. Shouldn’t they write down information about them? If they don’t, won’t the memory of his life “be / salt or late light.” He compares the memory to forgotten objects, leading the reader into a contemplation of what to do with the person’s belongings. In the second stanza, the speaker goes on to ask more practical questions about what’s going to happen to the body and the deceased person’s life after death. He’s not beating around the bush or using any sort of euphemism. But, they’re presented so directly that a reader may find themselves taken aback by the speaker’s tone. These are some of the ways that human beings have throughout history taken care of their dead. He’s thinking about a specific deceased person and contemplating whether they should “burn it” or bury it or set it in a raft on water. He wants to know what we “do with the body.” He doesn’t say “a” body but “the” body. In the first stanza of ‘As from a Quiver of Arrows,’ the speaker begins by asking a striking question. This is something that everyone wants, to an extent, and he wonders whether it’s wrong to do so. He alludes to the nature of human beings and their desire to forget pain and loss. What should be kept and what should be thrown out? Is it right to keep one thing and discard another? The speaker also considers memory and how long one can and should think about another person after they’ve died. These evolve into considerations of that person’s possessions, their memory, and useless and totemic things from their life.
The poem is a series of questions about what one should do with a body after death. The speaker considers both clearly and openly. ‘ As from a Quiver of Arrows’ by Carl Phillips is a powerful poem about loss and death.