Reading into twilight

A Wall Street Journal reader wrote to "Dear Book Lover" advice columnist Cynthia Crossen searching for a final book to read when ones days are numbered. She suggested a few volumes of poetry, the genre that wears the inky cloak best. Her recommendations? John Updike's Endpoint and Other Poems, The Oxford Book of Death anthology, Donald Hall's Without, and this seemingly sacred one:

Poetry is the medium that seems to interpret death for the living most affectingly. For a new anthology, "Till I End My Song," Harold Bloom selected the final works of 100 poets, many of whom were composing on the brink of death. "We hope to learn from the poets not how to die but how to stand against uncertainty," Mr. Bloom writes in his introduction. "The beauty and wisdom of these poems reverberate into the coming silence."