Graveyard Blues

The majority of “Graveyard Blues” is written in the past tense in which the speaker recalls the memory of burying their mother. The poem begins by describing the weather, which sets the poem’s melancholic mood: “It rained the whole time we were laying her down” (Line 1). Working directly with repetition, “Graveyard Blues” is a circular poem in which words and whole phrases are repeated. For example, in Line 2, the speaker begins the second line with “Rained” (Line 2) reinforcing the hammering effect of the cold, dark, rainy weather that occurred the day they buried their mother. The speaker states, “Rained from the church to the grave” (Line 2), signifying that the rain was consistent, and it walked with the speaker and their mother’s body from the funeral to the graveyard. The poem also repeats the phrase “her down” (Line 1, 2). This end-line repetition is carried throughout the first four stanzas of the poem. Trethewey continues to establish the poem’s mood by ending the first stanza with “The suck of mud at our feet was a hollow sound” (Line 3) and the word “hollow” (Line 3) signifies the emptiness the speaker feels following their mother’s