1606: Feathers or Lead | Jack Gilbert

[exceptindreams]

"Feathers or Lead

Comments

[nightspore]

That's pretty great.

[exceptindreams]

I agree. I have no idea what he is talking about -- it's sandwiched between a poem about it being "right to mourn/for the small hotels of Paris that used to be/when we used to be" and a short, vague poem about "trying to force out feeling and squeezing/out pain" in his collection Refusing Heaven. I really liked the poem and many other poems make references to living in Greece with Linda (Gregg, as it happens, who's also a wonderful poet), but I don't understand this one.

[versipellis]

This feels very much like there's a whole story behind it - I like the edge of threat, or of a messed-up society, implied there.

[oddgreyone]

This strikes a chord within me, but I don't quite know how or why.

The lines -

"And with me telling her
what it was like out there among the living.
She was steadily failing, like a Palladian palace
coming apart gracefully."

- are pure magic.

This was a lovely choice.

[crestingheart]

Like the others who have commented, this is a truly beautiful poem, but I'm not quite sure what it's trying to say. I love the last few lines, I love the older character illustrated here-her pride and strength.