Sounded ID: 9798823431538
ISBN: 9798823431538
Publication Date: November 11, 2022
Publisher: Author's Republic
Language: English
Author Name: Donald Platt
Narrator Name: Donald Platt
In SWANSDOWN, the poet Donald Platt makes a study of lifeís inevitable transitions, from loveís astonishing evolutions, to aging and its attendant losses. With the poem "Cloud Study" Platt brings his own mortality into view. Returning to a painting by Constable, he considers his own perspective, sitting by the Liffey, tending an injured knee. Young mothers, lovers, and runners pass, reminding the poet of who he once was and how quickly life, like weather, shifts. "Two minutes later, // The clouds would have taken on a different cast of light and shape / just like the thunderheads / now piling ...
In SWANSDOWN, the poet Donald Platt makes a study of lifeís inevitable transitions, from loveís astonishing evolutions, to aging and its attendant losses. With the poem "Cloud Study" Platt brings his own mortality into view. Returning to a painting by Constable, he considers his own perspective, sitting by the Liffey, tending an injured knee. Young mothers, lovers, and runners pass, reminding the poet of who he once was and how quickly life, like weather, shifts. "Two minutes later, // The clouds would have taken on a different cast of light and shape / just like the thunderheads / now piling up above the Liffey."
Platt advises: "To approach old age, one needs a new harsher style." And yet these poems are proof of the softness that may follow life's harshest reckonings, like the wisps of hair on his beloved brother's head as he lies dying, "fine / as milkweed silk. / His head a split / dried pod whose seeds / wind will scatter." The poems of Swansdown point us to a "larger landscape," they are the clouds "that scud across the blue escutcheon of sky. . . Sun's blazon through rain rampant."
"One of the finest American poets working today," writes poet and editor Adrian Matejka, "A writer of unparalleled lyric and formal integrity." It is indeed these qualities that gird Platt for this masterful eighth collection.
# | Title | Duration |
---|---|---|
1. | 01 Opening Credit |
0 mins 14 secs |
2. | Sleep |
2 mins 41 secs |
3. | Earthly Ideas |
5 mins 01 secs |
4. | For My Brother with Trisomy 21 as He Lies Dying |
2 mins 31 secs |
5. | Child's Riddle |
1 mins 02 secs |
6. | Sunset Pavilion |
2 mins 29 secs |
7. | Penelope's Loom |
2 mins 05 secs |
8. | Black Prince |
3 mins 05 secs |
9. | Section II |
0 mins 05 secs |
10. | At Oscar Wilde's Grave, Le Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise, Paris |
12 mins 02 secs |
11. | Section III |
0 mins 06 secs |
12. | Cloud Study |
4 mins 40 secs |
13. | Existing Tree |
2 mins 40 secs |
14. | Les Frelons |
1 mins 57 secs |
15. | Fire |
16 mins 06 secs |
16. | Star Magnolia |
1 mins 47 secs |
17. | Caddy |
5 mins 22 secs |
18. | Coney Island Avenue |
5 mins 46 secs |
19. | At The Mayo Clinic I Stare at a Wall of Blue Sodalite Marble |
4 mins 53 secs |
20. | Section IV |
0 mins 05 secs |
21. | Stanzas For Anna Akhmatova |
3 mins 06 secs |
22. | Section V |
0 mins 05 secs |
23. | Glyphs |
1 mins 00 secs |
24. | Turning Sixty |
4 mins 01 secs |
25. | Blink |
2 mins 26 secs |
26. | Liu Sheng's Dirge for Dou Wan, 117 BCE |
3 mins 33 secs |
27. | Eros At The YMCA |
2 mins 04 secs |
28. | Flesh Of Their Flesh |
4 mins 52 secs |
29. | Goodbye Dance |
2 mins 38 secs |
30. | North |
1 mins 21 secs |
31. | First Crocuses |
5 mins 16 secs |
32. | 32 Closing Credit |
0 mins 26 secs |