Poetry is subjective and often amorphous, so much so that sometimes I don’t even know how to truly judge a poem.
As an avid poetry reader, I find I can always rely on one criterion to judge poetry: the Adam Jon Miller scale:
How many times do I go back to a poem for another reading? And then another.
On this scale, I can say, I rank “Hidden Bird” pretty darn high.
What do I think this poem is about?
I don’t believe this poem is a about a bird at all, unless this bird is a mythological, God-like being—bodiless—that has out-endured all the earth.
Perhaps it is the God you believe in, if you believe in one, perched up high on an ethereal branch.
Regardless, this poem works its magic on me in each stanza. It trumpets its beautiful song through me before giving it all up in the end.
And it finishes, perhaps like a life does, finally letting go of the earthly “paradise” for something much more expansive and alive. Somewhere we’ll all know, eventually.
I give up the song.
I give up the place.
Now I ask you, what do you think it is about?
EXTRAS on CERAVOLO
Read “O Heart Uncovered” at The Poetry Foundation.
Read 3 more Ceravolo poems at The Academy of American Poets.
See the original publication of “Hidden Bird” in The Nation.
Listen to The Nation’s Jordan Davis read 3 Ceravolo poems.
p.s. if you like this, i have many more coming.
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