Overview
In Swansdown, Donald Platt makes a study of life’ s inevitable transitions, from love’ s 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.”
This book title, Swansdown, ISBN: 9781946830159, by Donald Platt, Danielle Jacqui, published by Grid Books (October 11, 2022) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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