Poetry Sunday: The Layers

I love this poem. It is contemplative; the poet is looking back on his life and seeing the striations laid down by the events of that life, like geological layers. 

Looking at the walls of a canyon, the Grand Canyon, for example, one can see those geological layers stacked one on the other, building all the way up to the surface. And so it is with our lives. Some of those layers are ones we would just as soon forget, but they all are a part of what made us who we are. 

The poet is saying that we should not be distracted by the litter of our daily lives; we should embrace and live in the layers, the solid stuff that made us. 

The Layers

by Stanley Kunitz

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Comments

  1. "I am not done with my changes."

    How very true! I like this poem.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We're all building new layers of our lives. Stanley Kunitz had a very long life. He died at age 100 in 2006, but this poem was written back in the 1970s, so he certainly was not done with his changes - or his layers - when he wrote this.

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  2. Wow, what a poem. Fits with the thoughts I have been having lately. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's a poem that gives us lots to think about and to reflect on our own layers,

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