Reading “Diaspora Sonnet with Swifts Insisting on Their Accomodations” by Oliver de la Paz
Poetry Lunch S6E5
Reading “Diaspora Sonnet with Swifts Insisting on Their Accomodations” by Oliver de la Paz from The Diaspora Sonnets, Liveright.
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A beautiful poem that caught me with its apt description of wheeling birds and left me with giant wonder about time and knowing it.
There’s a sweeping feeling here that I know well of watching a mass of birds move together with swift precision that you know is utterly unplanned yet is perfectly synchronized. It makes me feel like anything is possible, watching birds like that. It brings me sudden present in a way that’s always welcome.
I’m curious about the hurt the speaker feels watching, held alongside the “joy of being unwound.” And I appreciate the reference to things one can’t know (the speed at which they glide) just a few lines ahead of the astonishing last line:
“How beautiful to know the time.”
What time?? Which time!? THE time. I do not know how to know this but perhaps the point here is that the birds do. And watching them we can learn. There’s a hint about seasons and listening for their calls. Which alone time outside always helps me do. And then this gorgeous line ahead of the last:
“this choosing to in the meanwhiles of when.”
The meanwhiles of when! I’ve no idea what that means but it feels like it must occupy an eternity. But there’s hope for agency amidst that vastness, of a specific time to choose.
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Link to Purchase
Get the book: The Diaspora Sonnets
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About the Author
Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA for 2023-2025 and the author and editor of seven books including Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. His newest work, The Diaspora Sonnets, is long listed for the National Book Award and is the winner of the 2023 New England Book Award. You can read more about him on his website here.
