Opening with a reprint of a poem by e. e. cummings, this special issue of Mosaic does not deny or repress death, but excavates the power that death and dying have over our psychology, philosophy, and literature. The essays in this issue follow one of two paths: either they focus on the literary aspects of death and dying as found in literary figures such as Sylvia Path, J.D. Salinger, Gabriel García Márquez, D.H. Lawrence, Alexander Pope, Franz Schubert, and Henrik Ibsen; or they focus on the cultural aspects of death and dying such as denial, concepts of death, narrative, doctors, and the language of death.