Lucie Brock-BroidoI find each individual thought to be very beautiful. “Wrapped in its nest of
Lucie Brock-BroidoI find each individual thought to be very beautiful. “Wrapped in its nest of linens wound/with linden leaves in a child’s cardboard box” is particularly felicitous in sound and in meaning - the alliteration is clear but not obtrusive or heavy-handed; the finch is in its “nest” of linens. “Red scarves silking endlessly/from a magician’s hollow hat” is a wonderfully vivid description of the way a magician takes scarves from his hat, with the use of “silking” standing out as a non-standard but immediately clear description and use of language. In fact, she’s very image-based through all of it; hover-/hunting is the most abstract concept in the poem, but even that is rooted in the reality of wind. And all that makes the final three lines more of a betrayal – it’s suddenly abstract, suddenly about the end of childhood. I also wish that the “raptor beak” were more clearly tied to the end of the poem. Her use of language, however, is surprising and makes the familiar new, which is, for me, what language should do in a poem. I sometimes wish that poems didn’t have to mean (pace MacLeish) but could only be about language – it’s the striving for meaning in this that weakens it. -- source link
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