Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Winged Purposes" by Dean Young is a poignant meditation on the transient nature of life, love, and connection, exploring the inevitability of change and loss through a cascade of vivid imagery and metaphors. The poem navigates the space between longing and letting go, the tension between the desire to hold onto moments, people, and feelings, and the relentless march of time that carries all things away.

The opening lines, "Fly from me does all I would have stay," set the tone for the poem, establishing the theme of impermanence and the speaker's awareness of the futility in trying to grasp what is inherently fleeting. The juxtaposition of blossoms that do not stay and frost that melts from the yellow grass serves as a reminder of nature's cycles of birth and decay, which mirror the cycles of human experience.

The imagery of leashes snapping and contracts becoming void suggests a breaking of bonds and agreements, both literal and metaphorical, further underscoring the poem's exploration of loss and the dissolution of connections once thought to be secure. The crows that linger but a moment in the graveyard oaks evoke a sense of the ephemeral, the brief intersections of life and death, presence and absence.

Young's exploration of the inner turmoil and confusion that accompanies loss—"inside me it never stops so I can’t tell / who is chasing, who chased"—captures the disorientation and the blend of past and present that characterize grief and memory. The inability to distinguish between pursuer and pursued reflects the complex dynamics of relationships and the self's journey through time.

The poem moves through a series of transformations, from bats and swifts taking flight, to the fleeting nature of dreams, to children growing up and moving through life's stages. These transformations emphasize the relentless forward motion of time and the ways in which life's passages often elude our grasp.

The speaker's questions and reflections—"Your laugh / over the phone, will it ever answer me again?"—reveal a deep yearning for connection and a fear of its loss, highlighting the human longing for assurance and the fear of abandonment.

The references to photons, voices hurtling into outer space, and the poets Whitman and Dickinson, extend the theme of flight and transience to the cosmic scale, suggesting that even the most profound expressions of human thought and feeling are subject to the forces of time and space.

As the poem progresses, the imagery of running, the sea, and catching a train evoke moments of urgency, connection, and near-misses, capturing the intensity of living fully in the present even as the future looms uncertain.

The closing lines of the poem, with their invocation of what is gone and the remnants that may or may not endure, circle back to the central question of what, if anything, can withstand the ravages of time. The final image—a "useless sliver in a glacier" and the other stark images of finality—contrasted with the hope that some "twinge" or "pledged" feeling might persist, captures the essence of the human heart's resilience and the desire for love and connection to transcend the temporal.

"Winged Purposes" is a deeply reflective and beautifully crafted poem that invites readers to contemplate the beauty and sorrow of fleeting moments, the enduring quest for love and understanding, and the ways in which we seek to find meaning amidst the inevitable cycles of coming and going.

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