On All That Glides in the Air (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Lars Gustafsson
- First Published: 1984
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Flight, Birds, Life and death, Sweden or Swedish people, Animals
The Poem
“On All That Glides in the Air” is a short lyric poem of forty-two lines divided into three unequal stanzas originally written in Swedish. The title of the poem suggests a casual meditation on the joys of floating through the air. When a bird in flight appears to be resting, it is considered to be “gliding,” an apparently effortless motion. However, a closer examination of the poem’s three stanzas suggests that “gliding” has multiple meanings, many of which are not as benign as they appear on the surface.
The first line in the first stanza implies...
[The entire page is 1420 words long]
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